Variety of Community Partnerships in Related Programs

The National Society of Black Engineers’ Technical OutReach Community Help (TORCH) program aims to promote the value of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education at all levels by increasing exposure, enthusiasm, skills, and participation within the Black community. This initiative is accomplished through unique formal and informal experiences led by Black college student-leaders within the student-run national organization at local, regional and national scales. The program components include formal classroom-style training, informal activities, grassroots outreach, direct technical service and, for organizational reasons, traditional community service activities as well. The program was developed and is managed centrally, but the majority of program implementation is facilitated by host organization’s chapters, operating independently. The success of the program is driven by the student chapters and the community partnerships they create in the implementation of its activities. Through their creativity and leadership the partnerships created have ranged from technology to education. Furthermore, frequent leadership changes annually at all levels pose an additional threat to sustaining these essential relationships. We present preliminary analysis of the formation and maintenance of community partnerships for each of the program components and their impact on the efforts. We take as examples several programs that have been active over varying lengths of time and examine the interactions between the types of partnerships, attendance at various program components and student volunteer participation. Introduction and Program Model The Technical Outreach and Community Help (TORCH) program was created as an umbrella program for community service within a student-run engineering professional society. The TORCH program includes activities and programs of five different categories: ● Informal Science and Engineering Casual outreach activities, targeted at youth, that aim to show how science and engineering can be fun ● STEM Community Training Formal, classroom style education in STEM fields, aimed at youth and adults ● Technical Expertise Services Using technical skills to provide a direct service to help a community ● A Walk For Education An original activity used to spread the awareness of STEM education by distributing preparation material for college and careers in STEM fields ● Traditional Community Service Any other type of community services such as roadside clean up, volunteering at a shelter, etc. A central objective of TORCH is to promote the value of STEM education in the Black community. An emphasis is placed on the first three components as they encourage members to apply their technical skill while giving back. The latter two components are included as a grassroots outreach component and for record keeping purposes respectively. Chapters are P ge 23353.2 encouraged to connect efforts in multiple areas through the establishment of a TORCH Center, a single location offering multiple services to the community. Additional program objectives include providing STEM exposure to, generating enthusiasm about STEM in and providing introductory STEM training within the Black community. Due to the chapter based structure of the host organization and the variety of needs in individual communities, implementation is led by chapter-level student leaders. Following toolkits and guidelines established on a national level, chapters are able to tailor programming to fit the needs of their communities. Nationally, TORCH implementation has increased in recent years. In 2009-2010 fewer than 300 hundred service hours were completed and reported, in 2010-2011 that number increased to 1,300 and in 2011-2012 over 2,300 hours of technical community service were reported with an additional 1,400 hours each of A Walk For Education and traditional community service activities. Of the recorded TORCH activities, 48 percent were hosted by chapters located in east coast urban environments. This distribution is reflective of the distribution of members overall but is biased by stronger communication between regional leadership and chapters in areas where all chapters are located geographically closer to each other. In addition to the programmatic objectives, a set of research interests were also established. Research areas of interest center on motivations for STEM careers and the impact on the college students volunteering in this capacity. Some data has been collected from the members participating in the program. Additionally, a variety of challenges have been reported in initiating programs in new locations. The common factor in these two challenges was identified as the relationships with community partners. Catering the programmatic offerings to the needs of each community and the academic constraints of students at each university are priorities, but the current objective is to examine the partnerships that do exist. Previous research laid the pedagogical foundation for the program and outlined a longer-term research plan[1]. A second previous work conducted a preliminary analysis of the impact of the program on the volunteers[2]. Background and Objectives The national service learning clearinghouse presents the following categories as types of partnerships involved in service learning: networking, coordination, cooperation and collaboration[3]. This guide establishes all of these as open relationships and identifies networking as the simplest; just information sharing. The next level is also low risk: coordination involves sharing information and altering activities for mutual benefit. Cooperation increases the risk level for both parties as resources are shared in addition to information and altering activities. The final category, collaboration involves altering activities not only for mutual benefit but to enhance the capacity of other partners. Collaboration involves high commitment and working hand in hand. P ge 23353.3 Previous academic investigation into service learning partnerships has identified that the term ‘partnership’ is used frequently, but often these are not dyadic relationships [4]. Bringle posits that partnerships should be measured in terms of closeness, equity and integrity and presents a relationships continuum on which relationships can be assessed. In preliminary analysis of this student-run service model, we have found that community partnerships must be dyadic in order for the program to succeed. Upon the initial establishment of the program, research objectives below were also established: ● What experiences best motivate under-represented students to pursue STEM in the K-12 classroom and as a post-secondary education option? ● Do informal engineering experiences motivate K-12 students in their current STEM classroom experiences? ● Do informal engineering experiences motivate K-12 students to pursue STEM as a postsecondary option? ● How does technical community service impact college and graduate level mentors who serve K-12 students? ● Do SOL based informal experiences increase K-12 classroom performance? ● What is the impact of mentors of similar ethnic, socio-economic or other backgrounds have on K-12 students interested in STEM? To address these questions, a truly collaborative relationship between community agencies and schools granting access to youth is necessary for information gathering. Here we address an interest in how partnerships are formed and maintained based on several successful programs and what strategies have not results in successful programs. A deeper understanding of the partnerships will enable strengthening relationships in ways that allow for more detailed impactrelated data collection as well as better support for new programs. The motivating objective is to look for correlations between the programmatic components implemented and type of partner in order to establish best practices and expand the program further. In the current work we establish a baseline understanding of partnerships that were formed independently by chapters and begin categorization within established frameworks for evaluating partnerships. Data Collection and Summary of Results To study the correlation between program components and partnerships utilized, surveys were used to evaluate various chapter programs. Chapters were selected to participate in this survey process based on TORCH Hours Reports that are collected at the end of each semester. These reports detail the number of activities and category of each, as well as the number of volunteers at each activity. Participating chapters were selected to complete the survey based on the frequency of hours submitted. Chapters were separated into groups based on a record of consistent program partnerships, recorded programming and beginning partnerships, and chapters that are having difficulties conducting TORCH programs based on submitted reports. P ge 23353.4 One survey was sent to a group of chapters identified as “successful” (3 of 4 returned), one group identified as “recent success” (2 of 6 returned), and one group identified as “attempted, but mixed success” (2 of 5 returned). Each group was given a survey catered to specific interests in understanding partnerships based on the status of their program. The chapters did not know different surveys were distributed. Follow-up interviews were conducted of some chapters via email and in person when located in the same city as the authors. Each survey aimed to understand the relationships gained during programs. A series of Questions sent to the “successful” chapters focused on analyzing the success of establishing consistent partnership and programing. Questions sent to “recent success” chapters analyzed what has worked for successful programs so far, and what they could improve on. Lastly, questions sent to “attempted, but mixed success” chapters were meant to understand what avenues t