Pitt Engineering Career Access Program: Building A Pipeline For Success Through Project Care

This paper gives an overview of the lessons learned in the first year of implementing the preengineering component of the Pitt Engineering Career Access Program (PECAP). PECAP introduces a college curriculum to pre-11 th and pre-12 th grade high school students through Critical and Analytical Reasoning Enrichment (CARE) activities. Project CARE employs informal technology and standard-based activities to enrich cognitive, critical and analytical reasoning skills through a series of structured summer instructional classes, hands-on engineering and science projects, and academic year tutoring and advising sessions. Through the CARE activities, PECAP provides academic enhancement in critical areas for high performance in engineering education in which 9-12 th grade math, science and technology curricula are lacking. The first year results demonstrated that the CARE activities had a high value to the participants. The technology-based collaborative learning strategies aided the understanding of science and math of 58% of the participants and reinforced the problem-solving skills of a large majority (89%) of those enrolled. The enrichment of critical thinking by the Project CARE program helped 80% of the participants learn and understand math and science tasks. Overall, Project CARE contributed to the educational growth of 96% of the participants, with Logic/Problem-Solving skills receiving the highest marks as the program component that contributed the most to educational growth. Project CARE was most effective in providing a pathway for educational growth, strengthening study skills, building success in science and math, enhancing the ability to manage time and organize work, preparing for the next step in science, P ge 989.1 Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition Copyright ©2004, American Society for Engineering Education engineering and mathematics education, and exposing students to knowledgeable and respectful instructors. Pre-and post achievement tests show that CARE students who achieved lowest in the pre-test showed the highest improvement (48%) in the post-test. This compared to an 11% difference in improvement for those that scored highest in the pre-test. This was particularly true in quantitative tests versus science literacy tests.