About Making Science Make Sense®

As a science- and research-based company with major businesses in health care, nutrition and innovative materials, Bayer Corporation has a strong stake in helping to improve science education and to insure that all individuals are scientifically literate. Bayer demonstrates this commitment with its national award-winning Making Science Make Sense® (MSMS) program, a company-wide initiative that advances science literacy across the United States through hands-on, inquiry-based science learning, employee volunteerism and public education.

MSMS is one of 300 corporate social responsibility programs Bayer supports globally. For more than a century, Bayer has been acting in the public interest, demonstrating a distinct kind of corporate citizenship that benefits humankind and society at large. MSMS has been honored with numerous awards, including two presidential accolades -- The Ron Brown Award for Corporate Leadership, The President’s Service Award and most recently the National Science Board's Public Service Award.

More than 40 years ago, MSMS was born when Bayer volunteers began helping teachers teach and students learn science the way scientists do – by doing it. Today, in Bayer site communities across the country, more than 1,000 volunteers work to foster science literacy and ignite student interest in science.

MSMS relies on a number of important national and local partnerships. Nationally, Bayer has forged relationships with the U.S. Department of Education, National Science Foundation, National Science Teachers Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science and National Science Resources Center to change the way science is taught and learned in the classroom.

Locally, Bayer is spearheading education reform with school districts, other businesses, government and education organizations. Together, these groups work to implement standards-based, inquiry-centered curricula and provide teachers with ongoing professional development in science content and instructional methods.

Thus, MSMS not only helps educate the next generation of scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians, it equips all students with the skills acquired from a high-quality, hands-on science education, such as critical thinking, creativity and adapting to change. Skills that, in today’s scientific and technological world, are essential to any career one chooses.

Bayer’s national science literacy campaign, led by astronaut Dr. Mae C. Jemison, features the MSMS Experiment Guides for parents and children; the MSMS Audio Series, featuring two-minute sound byte science classes about everyday science topics; the C.A.U.S.E. Challenge™ High School Film Festival, an environmental film competition for Pittsburgh-area high school students; and, the annual Bayer Facts of Science Education surveys, which gauge the public’s opinion on the state of science education in the United States, as well as their support for reform and their recognition of the roles that science and science literacy play in everyday life.

Also, in order to further galvanize STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) industry involvement in education, Bayer has published and made widely available two new resource guides – Building a Diverse United States STEM Workforce: Perspectives on Creating Successful Business Education Partnerships and Planting the Seeds for a Diverse U.S. STEM Pipeline: A Compendium of Best Practice K-12 STEM Education Programs. These companion reports provide business leaders and others with information about best practice K-12 STEM education programs and practical advice for how they can support and/or replicate such programs in their local communities.