5 Questions for...Craig Barrett, former CEO and Chair, Intel Corp.
March 31, 2017
When Craig Barrett headed Intel Corp., the multinational technology company founded by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, no one was surprised that the lion's share of its philanthropic investments focused on support for science education. And perhaps no initiative within that broad portfolio was as popular as the Intel Science Talent Search, the prestigious national pre-college science competition known as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search for the first fifty-seven years of its existence that Intel started sponsoring in 1998. Last year, however, the company announced it would be discontinuing its sponsorship of the competition and followed that, more recently, with an announcement that it would be discontinuing its sponsorship of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, like the Science Talent Search a program of the nonprofit Society for Science & the Public, which Barrett has served as a board member since 2010.
Recently, PND spoke with Barrett about the company's decision to discontinue its support for the competitions, the transformation of science and engineering education more broadly, and the continued value, for students and society, of basic science.
Philanthropy News Digest: Intel was the lead sponsor of the Science Talent Search until last year. Were you surprised by the company's decision to discontinue its sponsorship of the contest and of the International Science and Engineering Fair, which it will no longer sponsor after this year?
Craig Barrett: Not terribly surprised; the warning signs were there. It should be said that Intel hasn’t pulled back from its overall funding for STEM projects and initiatives. As far back as I can remember, education and STEM education have been the number-one priority of the company's philanthropic support. But current leadership is probably not as science-oriented as prior leadership, so they’ve chosen to fund some projects that are a bit more engineering-oriented.
PND: When you were the CEO of Intel, did you have a difficult time explaining or justifying to your board and shareholders the cost of these types of sponsorships?
CB: I don't know of a CEO at Intel who has ever had a difficult time explaining or justifying philanthropic support for education, especially math and science education. Over the last couple of decades, the company has devoted roughly $100 million a year to philanthropic support for education. And not once have shareholders or the board raised concerns about those expenditures. Everyone seemed to accept that science, technology, engineering, and math were important to the company, and whatever the company did to feed and improve the pipeline for students interested in those topics, to support research and programs associated with those topics, was accepted as what Intel was all about.
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