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Engineering Student Recruiters: Review of Role of Women as Peer Recruiters for Potential Engineering Students University of Texas at Arlington

Abstract

For the last three years, the UT Arlington College of Engineering has had a group of undergraduate peer recruiters. These student recruiters represent UTA Engineering at college fairs, at University Preview Days, and on classroom visits to area high schools accompanying the Engineering staff recruiter. The student recruiters lead hands-on engineering activities in high school classrooms, do follow up contacts with potential students, answer questions from potential students and parents, help prepare material for recruiting events, and do other tasks to support the recruiting efforts of the University.

In this paper, we will discuss how the recruiting process works including what types of classrooms are visited. We will review the impact of the engineering student recruiters on our recruiting efforts, the benefits of the student recruiter program to potential students, and the logistics of managing this recruiting staff. We will look at the balance of male to female peer recruiters and this same balance in the College as a whole as well as the qualitative impact of female and male peer recruiters in the high school classrooms and at other recruiting venues. We will also discuss the benefits of being a peer recruiter student and what impact it has on the recruiting students themselves. The paper has female student peer recruiters as co-authors.

What is peer recruiting?

The University of Texas at Arlington College of Engineering uses many approaches to recruit students. In 2003, the College hired a full-time staff undergraduate recruiter to work on increasing engineering enrollments. The staff recruiter visits high schools and represents UTA Engineering at college fairs. Typically high school visits are arranged with an individual math, science, computer science, or engineering teacher at a high school and the recruiter stays to talk with many classes during the day. Since a large percentage of our student population is from the surrounding cities (Arlington sits in the middle of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex), the recruiter makes day visits to schools in the 17 school districts in our immediate area then takes infrequent longer trips to schools further from our base. UT Arlington also participates in college fairs across the state including fairs hosted by individual schools, by school districts and by areas. The College of Engineering sends recruiting representatives to some of these fairs based on the populations of students that they target.

In Fall semester 2006 it was decided to hire undergraduate engineering students to work as peer recruiters under the direction of the staff recruiter. The goal of the student peer recruiters was to better connect with our target audience for recruiting. These student peer recruiters, also called student ambassadors, represent UTA Engineering at college fairs, at University Preview Days, and on classroom visits to area high schools accompanying the Engineering staff recruiter. The student recruiters lead hands-on engineering activities in high school classrooms, do follow up

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Tiernan, J. C., & Peterson, L., & Johnson, R., & Phillips, J. (2009, June), Engineering Student Recruiters: A Review Of The Role Of Women As Peer Recruiters For Potential Engineering Students Paper presented at 2009 Annual Conference & Exposition, Austin, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--5763