International Business Machines Corp., worried the United States is losing its competitive edge, will financially back employees who want to leave the company to become math and science teachers.

The new program, announced Friday with city and state education officials in New York, reflects tech industry fears that U.S. students are falling behind peers from Bangalore to Beijing in the sciences.

Up to 100 IBM employees will be eligible for the program in its trial phase. The goal is to help fill shortfalls in the nation’s teaching ranks, a problem expected to grow with the retirement of today’s educators.

Math and science are of particular concern to companies in many U.S. industries that expect to need technical workers but see low test scores in those subjects and waning interest in science careers.

“Over a quarter-million math and science teachers are needed, and it’s hard to tell where the pipeline is,” said Stanley Litow, head of the IBM Foundation, the Armonk, N.Y.-based company’s community service wing. “That is like a ticking time bomb not just for technology companies, but for business and the U.S. economy.”

While many companies encourage their employees to tutor schoolchildren or do other things to get involved in education, IBM believes it’s the first to guide workers toward switching into a teaching career.

From left, Richard Mills, New York state education commissioner; Joel Klein, chancellor of New York City Public Schools; and Stanley Litow, IBM International Foundation president, talk to first-grade students Friday at P.S. 19 in New York City, where the officials announced IBM's Transition

The company expects older workers nearing retirement to be the most likely candidates, partly because they would have more financial wherewithal to take the pay cut that becoming a teacher likely would entail.

The workers would have to get approval from their managers to participate. If selected, the employees would be allowed to take a leave of absence from the company, which includes full benefits and up to half their salary, depending on length of service.

In addition, the employees could get up to $15,000 in tuition reimbursements and stipends while they seek teaching credentials and begin student-teaching.

From then on, the IBM people would become school employees – the program will encourage them to work in public schools but they can go private if they wish – and leave Big Blue’s payroll. But IBM plans to offer a mentoring program that would give its former workers guidance and teaching materials over the Internet.

“It’s not an easy transition to make,” said Litow, a former deputy schools chancellor in New York City.

IBM Chairman and CEO Samuel J. Palmisano, in a recent speech at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, said that the United States needed to boost efforts to advance innovation. A number of other countries – including Sweden, Finland, Israel, Japan and South Korea – all spend more on research and development, as a share of each country’s gross domestic product, than the United States does.

Palmisano noted that a third of all jobs in the United States require competency in science or technology, but that only 17 percent of college graduates earn degrees in technical fields.

“That’s 10 points behind the worldwide average,” he said. “And it is even farther behind China, where 52 percent of college degrees are going to science and technology majors.”

Palmisano offered three strategies for advancing innovation:

¢ Embrace a new model of innovation, “one that is open, collaborative, multidisciplinary and global.”

¢ “Rethink” ideas about intellectual property, so that collaborative innovation can flourish.

¢ Focus on developing “the next generation” of innovation leaders.

“Innovation requires all of us, working together as a society – the American society, and the global society,” he said. “If we demonstrate : collaborative leadership, the opportunities are ours for the taking. And the benefits will be ours to share.”