DETROIT – First daughter Ivanka Trump made a stop in Detroit, and she brought some very heavy hitters along with her in the hopes of pushing STEM education.
STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math.
Trump was joined by Dan Gilbert and executives from Amazon, Facebook, Google, General Motors and Lockheed Martin.
They were all there to push computer science and coding in schools. The companies are making a commitment to support the education.
Top-line executives, most of them women, came to town looking to make Detroit schools and schools across the country turn out more graduates with needed skills.
President Donald Trump signed an order Monday telling Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to steer $200 million a year to STEM education.
On Tuesday, he sent his daughter and adviser to Detroit, where she announced an additional $100 million promised by the private sector.
"Righ now, less than half of American schools have even a single computer science course, so we have to do better," Ivanka Trump said. "We are going to do better, and this is a giant leap forward in that direction."
The real push is for diversity. More young women and inner-city children are targeted for the money. Summit host Gilbert said it's the only sure fire way to change cities such as Detroit.
"This is the answer," Gilbert said. "This is flat out the answer. You put technology skills into these urban schools and they focus on it. We focus on the teachers. We are going to come out the other end in a fairly short period of time."
It isn't about distant futures, it's a here and now proposition, said Lockheed Martin Chairwoman and CEO Marillyn Hewson. She said Mars is coming into view in five years.
"So when the first American steps on the red dust of Mars, it's going to be because of computer sciences, and we want to get our youth involved in that," Hewson said. "They can participate in the very important missions going forward."
It's a modern space race, and Hewson believes Americans will land on Mars by 2023. It takes a million lines of code to make the deep spaceship work.
The president said money going to STEM education is not nearly enough, so it's likely there will be a continued push in this direction for the years to come.
You can watch Rod Meloni's full story in the video posted above.