The Associated Press

MENLO PARK, Calif. - U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham launched a campaign Thursday to help the United States regain its footing as a science superpower by boosting the number of American students interested in becoming scientists and engineers.

The "Scientists Teaching and Reaching Students" program will award scholarships at national labs for math and science teachers. It will require the labs, including Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories, to host a total of 2,000 fifth- and eighth-graders for at least one day each year.

"The risks of a scientifically illiterate nation in the 21st century are too great for business as usual," Abraham said at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. "Right now it appears that despite our grand national lab structure, ...we could fail to maximize our potential."

U.S. fourth-graders ranked among the world's best in math and science but by 12th grade, the students trailed almost every other industrialized country, ahead of only Cyprus and South Africa, according to the Third International Mathematics and Science Study completed in 1999.