Hoping to encourage scientific study that goes beyond the dissected frog, the Pittsburgh Technology Council will host a STEM Summit Thursday designed to hook young students early on a career in science and technology.

The Tech Council has focused on workplace-readiness initiatives and STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) projects since the late 1990s, but the topic has become especially relevant in a recession that has companies pinching pennies and scaling back on-the-job training programs.

Preparing students for work in the tech sector doesn't necessarily mean HTML coding by graduation, said Justin Driscoll, director of STEM Talent Acquisition for the Tech Council and the summit organizer.

Early training could look like a Lego-building competition before third-grade recess, or a high school internship program available for college credit.

The one-day STEM Summit at the Radisson Hotel in Green Tree is sponsored by Bayer Corp., California University of Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg and Lanxess.

The $99 registration is available at STEM.PghTech.org.

Vicki Phillips from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will deliver a keynote address. Her organization awarded $40 million in November to Pittsburgh Public Schools as part of a plan designed to improve teacher effectiveness.

In the past decade, education legislation has focused on catching American students up with counterparts from countries where training in math and science begins early.

Research has shown that students who pursue careers in science and technology usually are hooked on the subject by age 11, said Rebecca Lucore, executive director of the Bayer USA Foundation. She'll moderate a panel at the summit.

Ms. Lucore said the foundation's past four years of outreach work focused on diversity within the science sector, since women and minorities remain an underepresented population in the field.

Sometimes it's enough just to take the fear out of physics.

"We're not trying to create hundreds of thousands of scientists, but a base line of science literacy," she said.

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