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Session 1370

Capturing Young MINDS with MITE – A Pre-College Residential Program Generating Results

Andrea M. Ogilvie The University of Texas at Austin

Abstract The Minority Introduction to Engineering (MITE) program at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) is a five-day summer residential program designed to spark students’ interest in engineering as an exciting career choice. MITE offers 100 high school juniors and seniors the opportunity to discover engineering through hands-on experience and interaction with engineering students, faculty, staff, and practicing engineers. While residing on the UT campus, MITE participants attend interactive workshops that highlight: engineering disciplines; the college admissions process; and financial aid/scholarships. In addition, student teams participate in a week long design competition where they are required to design, build, and test a working model to meet given specifications within a budget. MITE provides high school students with an understanding of the personal commitment required to obtain a degree in engineering.

Hosted by the Equal Opportunity in Engineering (EOE) Program for more than 25 years, MITE serves as our most effective recruitment program. Seventy percent of MITE participants, eligible for college enrollment in Fall 2004, applied for admission to UT Austin. This paper provides an overview of the MITE Program and captures lessons learned over the years. In addition, it describes how data from Recruitment Plus, a university wide student recruitment database, is used to evaluate and demonstrate the effectiveness of MITE. Program coordinators also use this data to direct their continued efforts to enhance and evolve the MITE program.

The EOE Program at UT Austin was established in 1970 for the recruitment, retention, and academic development of Hispanic, African American, and Native American students interested in pursuing careers in engineering. EOE supports students historically underrepresented in engineering and strives to increase the number of minority engineering graduates from UT Austin through comprehensive support programs that address outreach and recruitment, academic enrichment, leadership, and professional development.

As a result of EOE and programs such as MITE, the minority student enrollment for the College of Engineering has increased substantially over the past 34 years, from 94 in 1971, to 890 in Fall 2004, which represents 17.6 percent of the total undergraduate enrollment1. Our vision is to create a student body at UT Austin’s College of Engineering that reflects the demographics of the college age population within the state of Texas, 43 percent ethnic minorities.

Introduction The Minority Introduction to Engineering (MITE) program was created at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) in 1980 to spark high school students’ interest in engineering as an exciting career choice. MITE was initiated to address the following challenges: (1) lack of Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education

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Ogilvie, A. (2005, June), Capturing Young Minds With Mite – A Pre College Residential Program Generating Results Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--14988