Brookings Mountain West remains vitally interested in the many public policy issues facing

Nevada, none more important than the states education and workforce systems. For that
reason, we have focused heavily this year on the states critical STEM (science-technologyengineering-mathematics) education and training efforts, and in November we released a major
report on the subject entitled Cracking the Code on STEM: A People Strategy for Nevadas
Economy.
The well-received report contained numerous recommendations for improving the
opportunities available to Nevada residents by improving the STEM workforce training available
to them. This week, in fact, we are pleased to learn that Nevada System of Higher Education
Chancellor Dan Klaich is now supporting a key recommendation from the Brookings Mountain
West report to create a broad STEM workforce development challenge grant program aimed at
supporting top-flight regional training initiatives. Brookings Mountain West looks forward to
working with the Nevada Legislature, Gov. Sandoval, NSHE, and the states Regional
Development Authorities like the Las Vegas Global a Economic Alliance to advance this idea and
others related to the states STEM education future.
At the same time, we wish to put behind us the unfortunate NSHE plagiarism issue that
engulfed an early version of the Brookings Mountain West challenge grant proposal.
As we usually do in developing policy reports we engaged in dialogues with multiple state and
regional stakeholders on STEM education and training, including Chancellor Klaich.
In April, Klaich emailed Mark Muro to inform him that he was putting ideas forward on STEM
education and that he wanted to use some of the concepts that we had shared with him on the
topic. Klaich wanted to put it on record that he was drawing upon Brookings STEM ideas. Mark
Muro replied that he could use our work provided he followed some basic ground rules: that the
content of the Brookings STEM work be used strictly for your [NSHEs] edification; and that
NSHE only loosely describe the Brookings STEM concept. Chancellor Klaich noted he planned
to present these ideas in a panel discussion associated with the policy development process.
Yet, as it turned out, the concept memo that Muro sent NSHE was not loosely referred to as
requested; rather it was replicated almost word-for-word from the original. Also, the panel
discussion turned out to be a formal presentation before an interim committee of the Nevada
Senate. Our preliminary draft was thus entered into the public record as a supporting document
for an NSHE STEM Challenge Grant. Staff at The Lincy Institute, which did not know about the
exchange or ground rules, noticed the use of a Brooking Mountain West draft under an NSHE
label and forwarded the document to Muro. It was at that point that Muro requested that NSHE
provide proper attribution to Brookings.
That was done. The chancellor has apologized and we at Brookings Mountain West and the
Brookings Institution consider the matter behind us. We are pleased the debate is moving
forward on STEM education in Nevada.

We regard NSHE as a key stakeholder in the work of improving Nevada and look forward to
constructive future engagement with its leadership. We therefore hope that this statement
addresses all relevant questions concerning NSHEs use of Brooking Mountain Wests
intellectual property.
Hopefully the relevant stakeholders can return now to the work of developing a stronger system
for delivering top-flight industry-led regional skills initiatives.