WE-IMPACT: Women in Engineering-Improving Program Assessment Tools for Outreach and Retention Programs

The Women in Engineering organizations at the Rochester Institute of Technology include Women in Engineering at RIT (WE@RIT) and Women in Technology (WIT). WE@RIT and WIT have programming to retain and recruit women into their respective engineering based educational programs. The ability to track data to assess the outcomes of their efforts is a critical component in determining individual program and overall organizational success. WE@RIT and WIT are working cooperatively to improve and expand the assessment framework of their outreach and retention programs. This paper focuses on two outreach programs for middle school girls run by WE@RIT and WIT: Park & Ride, a two day program for girls in grades 6-8 and Girls Technology Day for girls from 4 th -7 th grades. This paper outlines the analysis and enhancement of existing assessment tools used by two outreach programs. The improvement strategy includes integrating a social science based perspective on creating survey questions from intended behaviors and associated outcomes as well as through using age-appropriate language. In addition, a revised stream-lined approach including summative assessment and both indirect and direct measures is presented as an alternative to an existing cumbersome structure based heavily on formative assessment and indirect measures. Full program descriptions, desired outcomes, and past assessment results are included as case studies.