University Faculty Commitment And Involvement In An Outreach Program: Instrumental In Program Success

WISE Investments (WI) is an National Science Foundation-funded program which is designed to encourage more females in middle, high school, and community college to pursue engineering and related careers. A major component of the program are two, two-week summer workshops which introduce middle, high school, and community college teachers and guidance counselors to engineering. These teachers are then charged with integrating what they learn in the workshop into their classrooms. The counselors are charged with incorporating engineering information in their career counseling and developing and implementing an outreach program to encourage students to consider engineering. This has the effect of introducing students as young as 12 years old to engineering as a career option. The summer workshops include eight hands-on labs on different disciplines of engineering. Arizona State University College of Engineering and Applied Science faculty members present the labs. These eight faculty members have committed time and effort into developing and presenting labs that bring engineering to a pre-college level, and that model gender-inclusive instruction techniques. The teachers have 16 hours to brainstorm ideas on how to integrate this information on engineering into their current curriculum and to develop applications to implement in the classroom. The engineering faculty work with the teachers for about half of this time to help them find ways to do this. The faculty make suggestions on how to make the labs less expensive, easier to do, shorter, etc. The faculty also help to break down the engineering labs into basic math and science theories that need to be taught in the classroom. This way, the teachers are not adding additional information into the curriculum. They are just presenting the required information in a different -more engineering-oriented -way. Many faculty, teachers, and counselors form a bond that continues into the school year. Faculty work with teacher teams who are each charged with preparing a Saturday Academy based on one area of engineering. The Academies are attended by approximately 40 middle and high school girls. Faculty are sometimes present during the academies to assist the teacher teams, host activities in their own labs, or simply to act as role models for the girls. The process of cooperation established between the engineering faculty, the teachers, and the counselors is discussed. Examples of lab projects, collaboration, and resulting teachers’ lesson P ge 583.1 plans will be given. Anecdotes from teachers participating in the program will be presented to show how the university faculty helped them to succeed in the program.