Improving Early Interest And Confidence In Engineering: Creating Partnerships Between Universities, K 12 Teachers, Their Students, And Engineers
- Conference
- Location
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Austin, Texas
- Publication Date
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June 14, 2009
- Start Date
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June 14, 2009
- End Date
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June 17, 2009
- ISSN
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2153-5965
- Conference Session
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Engineering Collaboration: Faculty and Student Involvement in K-12 Programs
- Tagged Division
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K-12 & Pre-College Engineering
- Page Count
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38
- Page Numbers
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14.705.1 - 14.705.38
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--5182
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/5182
- Download Count
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505
Paper Authors
Elizabeth Eschenbach Humboldt State University
Beth Eschenbach is a Professor of Environmental Resources Engineering at Humboldt State University. Beth left civil engineering as an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz, and graduated with honors in mathematics and in psychology. She obtained her MS and PhD at Cornell in Environmental and Water Resources Systems Engineering. She completed a postdoc at the Center for Advanced Decision Support in Water and Environmental Systems (CADSWES) at UC Boulder. Bets career goals include increasing the diversity of engineering students and improving education for all engineering students. Two of Bets current projects are an NSF sponsored S-STEM grant and the project described in this paper.
Mary Virnoche Humboldt State University
Mary Virnoche is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at Humboldt State University. Mary collaborates with colleagues in STEM areas to increase interest and diversity in those fields. She is currently working with a team on an NSF S-STEM project. In recent past her action research focused on the Expanding Your Horizons conference designed to generate and retain girls' interest in science and engineering. Mary completed her doctoral work at the University of Colorado at Boulder: her early work there addressed concerns about the digital divide.
Lonny Grafman Humboldt State University
Lonny Grafman is an Instructor of Environmental Resources Engineering and Appropriate Technology at Humboldt State University; the co-founder and instructor in a full immersion, Spanish language and appropriate technology summer program in Parras, Mexico; and the executive editor of the International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering. In addition, he is the President of the Appropedia Foundation, sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives. Lonny seeks ways to increase knowledge of the world through exposure and synthesis, highlighting that science, culture and language are inextricably linked. He seeks to demonstrate this connection through service-learning based education, working to improve existing conditions by leveraging local knowledge, materials, wealth and labor through transparency and stakeholder participation.
Forrest Stamper Hoopa Valley High School
Forrest Stamper is a teacher at Hoopa Valley High School. For the past 12 years he has taught every math and science course offered at Hoopa Valley High School. Prior to teaching at HVHS, he taught 13 years at Humboldt State University for the Forestry and Computer Information Systems departments. He spent his first 10 years teaching elementary school in the Los Angeles Area. He has a B.S. in Biology from UC Santa Barbara.
Laura Atkins Humboldt State University
Laura Atkins is a sociology graduate student at Humboldt State University. She obtained her BA in sociology at Kent State University in Ohio. It is there that she became interested in medical sociology while working as a research assistant for a project that explored racial disparities in access to health and utilization of health care services. She is interested in both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Laura’s career goals include legitimizing alternative discourses around health and working towards serving the health needs of underprivileged populations.
Rebecca Raymond Humboldt State University
Rebecca Raymond is a sociology graduate student at Humboldt State University. She obtained her BA at Western Washington University in Washington state. Her main course work focused on inequality and social stratification, specifically, disparities between social classes. She continues her interest in social problems in her graduate work. Her career goals include developing local non-profit facilitates that promote distribution of resources to the underprivileged portions of the community as well as increasing awareness of inequality through teaching.
Katie Mills Humboldt State University
Katie Mills is currently on the staff at Humboldt State University, working with Academic Programs and Undergraduate Studies. Katie is a graduate of Humboldt State University, having completed a BS in Interdisciplinary Physics and Chemistry and a BA in Sociology. Her academic interests include the retention of underrepresented students in science and engineering.
Abstract
NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract
Improving Early Interest and Confidence in Engineering: Creating Partnerships between Universities, K-12 Teachers, their Students and Engineers
Abstract
The Design Your Future (DYF) project is part of a California State University (CSU) multi- campus Engineering Academies initiative with the goal of increasing the number of students that enroll in engineering programs. In 2008, Humboldt State University launched a multi-faceted project with three main components. The first component included a hands-on, one week summer DYF Teaching Institute offered to 15 secondary teachers. Secondary teachers participated in a hands-on, problem solving engineering curriculum where they learned and used the design process to complete a service learning project for a local client. The second component focused on building community between local practicing engineers and K-12 educators. Participants attended social events and were later linked through web tools that enable teachers to find engineers who are available to assist in delivering engineering content. The third component was a Fall 2008 “Introduction to Design” class. This college credit class was co-taught by high school and university faculty and offered in a mixed online format for 11th and 12th grade students at the only California public high school on an Indian reservation. Assessment results from the summer teacher workshop show that institute participation improved teacher understanding of engineering and the design process. In addition, confidence in teaching engineering concepts improved. Participants reported that they could on average add 39 more teaching days of engineering-related curriculum into their teaching and were very likely to make changes to increase engineering curriculum. Follow up teacher workshops will assess how much engineering content has been added to the teachers’ classes. No assessment of the community building component has been completed. This fall sixteen high school students started the Introduction to Design course and thirteen finished. This spring the students are implementing their design project as part of a high school credit course. Assessment results from the pilot course indicate that students’ confidence in their ability to succeed in college increased. However, students were not more likely to choose engineering as a major by the end of the first term. Another assessment will occur in May 2009, after the high school students have implemented their design project on their campus.
Keywords: high school outreach, dual-enrollment, co-curricular, introduction to design, underrepresented, Native American, service learning and community partnerships.
California State University (CSU) Engineering Academies
The CSU Engineering Academies project supports 14 of the 23 CSU campuses to use multiple outreach models to increase engineering enrollment by reaching out and attracting diverse underrepresented student populations. The purpose of the academies is to “expand and diversify the pool of incoming students who are well prepared and eager to enter as engineering majors” 1. This expanded diverse pool of engineering students should help meet the governor’s request for
Eschenbach, E., & Virnoche, M., & Grafman, L., & Stamper, F., & Atkins, L., & Raymond, R., & Mills, K. (2009, June), Improving Early Interest And Confidence In Engineering: Creating Partnerships Between Universities, K 12 Teachers, Their Students, And Engineers Paper presented at 2009 Annual Conference & Exposition, Austin, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--5182
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