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Inspire: A Low Cost Pre College Engineering Enrichment Program

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Conference

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Publication Date

June 22, 2008

Start Date

June 22, 2008

End Date

June 25, 2008

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Learning Needs and Educational Success

Tagged Division

Minorities in Engineering

Page Count

20

Page Numbers

13.751.1 - 13.751.20

DOI

10.18260/1-2--4243

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/4243

Download Count

612

Paper Authors

biography

Brenda Hart University of Louisville

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Director of Student Affairs at the J.B. Speed School of Engineering. Her research areas include recruitment and retention programs for females and under-represented minorities as well as working with first year engineering students.

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biography

Veronica Hinton-Hudson University of Louisville

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Currently an Assistant Professor in the Computer Information Systems department within the College of Business. Her research interest includes Quality Engineering and applied statistics, Production Operations, Systems Analysis, Mentoring, and STEM Pre-College Initiative programs.

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biography

James Lewis University of Louisville

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Currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Fundamentals at the J.B. Speed School. His research interests include parallel and distributed computer systems, cryptography, undergraduate retention and technology used in the classroom.

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Abstract
NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

INSPIRE: A low-cost, urban pre-college engineering program

Abstract

For more than 20 years, the University of Louisville has conducted the INSPIRE pre-college program. The primary purpose of the program is to expose ethnic minority students and females to the various fields of engineering offered at the University. The ultimate goal of the program is to increase the number of students historically under-represented in engineering, particularly at the University. This paper will highlight a low-cost, urban summer pre-college program targeting students under-represented in engineering. With respect to its impact on minority engineering recruitment, the program has been one of the intervention strategies used at the University of Louisville (UofL) to introduce URMs to various fields of engineering. An overview of the INSPIRE program, selected activities, costs and outcomes will be described. Critical success factors, anecdotal observations, and challenges faced by program administrators will also be discussed.

I. Introduction

According to a recent report by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), located within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences, the U.S. population has become more diverse over the past two decades as the minority population groups (African-Americans, Hispanics, American Indians/Alaskan Natives, and Asians/ Pacific Islanders) have increased more rapidly than the White population. As projected for 2005, minorities made up approximately 33 percent of the U.S. population. These same minority groups are expected to represent nearly 39 percent of the total population by the year 2020. Furthermore, according to the latest population projections revealed by the US Census Bureau and depicted in Figure 1, these minority population groups are expected to be more than half (52 percent) of the resident college-age (18–24 years old) population of the United States by 2050. Additionally, just about a quarter century ago, the National Science Board’s Commission on Precollege Education in the Mathematics, Science, and Technology (MST) assessed the state of US precollege education in the subject fields and found it seriously lacking to meet the projected demand.[1]

In the late 1980’s the Task Force of Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Technology called for cooperation among schools, colleges, industry and federal and state governments to increase the pool of science and engineering talent, particularly for underrepresented minority groups, through programs similar to those instituted following the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957—which ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments.[2] Two decades later, the pipeline statistics are not as promising given the seriousness of the need for such technical skills.

According to the 2002 data provided by the Engineering Workforce Commission, Whites earned 68.68% of the bachelors degrees awarded in the various engineering disciplines while African- American only earned 5.09%. Hispanic recipients were slightly higher than that of African- Americans at 6.52% and American Indians were less than one-half of a percent.[3] The Science

Hart, B., & Hinton-Hudson, V., & Lewis, J. (2008, June), Inspire: A Low Cost Pre College Engineering Enrichment Program Paper presented at 2008 Annual Conference & Exposition, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 10.18260/1-2--4243

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2008 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015