High School Enterprise: Authentic Engineering Experiences In Secondary Education

The need for more, and better prepared, individuals entering STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education is well documented by several organizations. High School Enterprise (HSE) is an extraor in-curricular school activity in which students from grades 9-12 engage in authentic, inquiry-based STEM learning. Students participate on teams organized as virtual companies that develop products or services. Team projects are STEM-based and continue for one or more academic years. Teams are coached by specially-trained high school teachers who are paid similarly to athletic coaches. At the conclusion of their HSE experiences, we expect that HSE team members will demonstrate proficiency in applied workforce skills; will be more disposed to enter STEM related careers; and will be better prepared to successfully undertake the training needed for these careers. An HSE implementation is a partnership among the team, its home institution, a university partner, and industry and community sponsors and advisors. HSE is modeled on a highly successful and nationally recognized undergraduate inquiry-based engineering program which started as a NSF funded pilot at Michigan Technological University. The undergraduate program (Enterprise) is now a self-sustaining program that attracts engineering and other STEM-discipline students to higher education, retains them, and makes them more marketable to employers when they graduate. The high school program described in this paper is currently funded by two NSF awards, IEECI and ITEST, with the expectation that it, too, will become self sustaining through private and corporate funds. There are currently twelve high school sites (ten in Michigan, one in Georgia, and one in Puerto Rico) and three universities participating. The program, which is now in Year 3 of a five-year pilot, is undergoing extensive external assessment to evaluate outcomes, with preliminary data available in early 2010. This paper will present program details, profiles of HSE teams, and the analysis of available data pertaining to program goals. Program Overview and Background High School Enterprise (HSE) is an extraor in-curricular school program in which students from grades 9-12 engage in active, applied STEM learning. Students participate on teams organized as “virtual companies” that develop products or services as they engage in long-term projects with a STEM focus. HSE team projects are STEM-based but involve students from all backgrounds and with a variety of interests. HSE teams are coached by specially-trained high school teachers called “teacher-coaches.” Teams have access to real-world expertise and mentoring from professionals in academia and industry. HSE teams write business plans, solve real-world problems, perform testing and analyses, build prototypes, manufacture parts, operate within budgets, and manage their projects. Each spring, HSE teams showcase their work alongside college students at the Michigan Tech’s Undergraduate Expo. At the conclusion of their HSE experiences, it is expected that the students will demonstrate proficiency in applied workforce skills, they will be more disposed to enter STEM careers, and they will be prepared to undertake the training and education needed to enter these careers. P ge 15642.2 HSE is modeled after Michigan Tech’s highly successful and nationally acclaimed undergraduate Enterprise program. The Enterprise program was founded on the proposition that the integration of active, applied learning into the undergraduate engineering curriculum would result in greater retention and graduation rates among undergraduate engineering students. Enterprise, which started in 2000 as a pilot program funded by NSF, has succeeded beyond expectations and has proved to be a sound investment. It is now a self-sustaining program that attracts engineering and other STEM-bound students to the University, keeps them, and makes them more marketable to employers when they graduate. In early 2006, representatives from the University, the local Intermediate School District (ISD), and local industry formed a commission to begin investigating ways to strengthen K-12 linkages with higher education and industry. This new commission has three charges: help strengthen the high school curricula to prepare more students for higher education and STEM careers, extend the excitement generated by the highly successful University Enterprise program into the K-12 system, and create a culture of 21st century entrepreneurship among high school students. Based on its positive experience with undergraduate Enterprise, the University agreed to fund a small, one-year pilot High School Enterprise program in three Michigan high schools for the 2007/08 school year. Three diverse Michigan high schools and teachers were recruited to establish HSE teams and provide in-house teacher-coaches. A pilot summer workshop to train the teacher-coaches was developed by faculty and delivered on the University campus in summer 2007. The HSE program director worked with the teams from then on through the 2007/08 academic year to select projects, assist teams in establishing university partnerships, and advise and monitor the teams during the first pilot year. The teacher-coach for each team received a $5000 stipend and each team was allowed up to $5000 for project materials and supplies. The three pilot teams – from Cass Tech in Detroit, Calumet High School in the Upper Peninsula, and Utica High School presented their work at the University Undergraduate Expo in April 2008. A brief summary of general information on the three participating schools is provided in Table 1. Table 1. General information on the three-school pilot effort of the 2007/08 academic year. School and Location Team Project Description Team and Coach information Cass Tech H.S., Detroit, MI Computer gaming 12 students, female coach in business technology Calumet H.S., Calumet, MI Alternative shelter 10 students, male coach in vocational technology Utica H.S., Utica, MI Underwater ROV competition 16 students, male coach in computer technology Based on promising results from this effort, High School Enterprise has received two National Science Foundation awards to expand and fully assess outcomes of the High School Enterprise program: a $100,000 one-year grant under NSF’s Innovations in Engineering Education, Curriculum and Infrastructure (IEECI), and a $1.5 million three-year award from the NSF P ge 15642.3 Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program began in December 2008. Using these two awards, along with significant funding from the University and from industry sources, we lengthened the pilot to five years and added several more schools. We are now in Year 3 of this five-year pilot. Under the IEECI grant, the HSE program expanded to include five schools during the 2008/09 school year. ITEST funding allowed HSE to expand further. As of December 2009, there are ten participating high schools in Michigan, one in Georgia, and one in Puerto Rico. These schools are diverse in locale and include rural, suburban, and inner city schools. They are also diverse in demographics, enrolling students from all income levels, first generation students, and high numbers of students from ethnic groups that are traditionally underrepresented in engineering. A profile of the 2009/10 host secondary institutions is provided in Table 2. For the 2010/11 school year, there are plans to add several more schools. Table 2. Host school profiles for 2009/10 HSE teams. High School and Location R u ra l