A View From The High School/Two Year College Partnership Interface: Our Best Practices Employed In Engineering And Technology Education

Collin College, three Independent School Districts (ISDs) in North Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas have established a partnership to significantly increase the students engaged in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) with the ultimate goal of having these students join the STEM workforce after a two-year degree, a 2 (AS) + 2 (BS) pathway or a four-year degree. Building upon previous cooperation among these institutions, Best Practice methods have been identified and are being implemented to bring about a cultural change that will lead to a sustained increase in the production of STEM-trained graduates needed by local high-tech businesses. In order to expand the diameter of the STEM pipeline, new non-traditional student populations must be recruited, encouraged and not traditionally “weeded-out.” Our research and Best Practices center on two specific populations: females and non-top 15% students that are considering whether college is part of their pathway to the workforce. Our work builds upon a very successful five year NSF STEM Talent Expansion Program (STEP) grant in which curriculum alignment and clean college/university articulations were accomplished. In this work, we present the results of concerted efforts across the high school/two-year college interface that have resulted in clear flowcharted articulated pathways for students to successfully navigate. Best Practices are presented showing an engaged robotics club that supports ASEE national competitions/STEM robotics outreach camps and the utilization of unique two-year college student chapters of professional organizations such as the Society of Women Engineers and the Information Systems Security Association. As the end goal is to produce students with relevant skill sets and technical certifications for local industry, strategies that result in “industry engagement in the classroom” are critical. Through interaction with local business councils and college industrial advisory boards with members who are engaged across the “interface,” the relevance of the technical education offered is assured. In conclusion, our presentation highlights unique approaches that attempt to encourage students and minimize the hurdles confronted by a potential STEM student. Introduction It has been realized and well documented that the “gathering storm” has come and in order to weather it and in order to re-establish the manufacturing and technology base of the United States, we need “One Million Additional STEM College Graduates” over the next decade. Currently, we graduate about 300,000 STEM discipline graduates per year. We will need to graduate an extra 100,000 STEM students in each of the next ten years to meet the projected need. In this paper, our partnership describes a number of Best Practices that we have adopted with excellent results to date. The context of our presentation is the interface between the high school and the two-year college. We must provide cleanly articulated pathways from high school P ge 26131.4 to two-year to four-year institutions in the traditional 2 + 2 format for Bachelor’s Degree students. Simultaneously, we must provide successful pathways for students that exit the pipeline for employment after their two-year AAS degree. Strategies need to be in place to help them succeed in the two-year workforce college experience. The use of co-op experiences and handson lab education to provide the engagement that they require is critical. Therefore, the interface between the high school and the two-year college becomes a critical zone where Best Practices must be discovered, invented and disseminated for national implementation in order to meet the challenge posed by the aforementioned requirement of one million additional graduates. As discussed by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) in their 2012 report, the fastest way to generate graduates and attain our goal is through different methods of teaching, supporting and retaining students. Finding ways to engage them and help them to persist is critical to attainment of our goal. In the following discussion, our partnership offers a number of Best Practices that help to generate and maintain students early in the pipeline, engage institutions to common purposes for the good of the students, create clear articulated pathways in order to build the trust of students and parents, and work with industrial stakeholders as they are realizing that they can no longer take a passive role simply waiting for students to exit the pipeline. Beginning To Build The STEM Pipeline Increasing the number of students in the STEM pipeline really means increasing the number of students entering the pipeline and retaining those that have entered. Traditional thinking has been to encourage students that are good in Math to give STEM fields a try. During the trial period, students are weeded out. Those that “can’t make it” in fields like engineering are encouraged to seek other fields of study like Business or Accounting. Our approach has been to challenge all parts of this stereotypic process. In order to facilitate our planning and to have a clear vision of all of the inputs, outputs and feedback loops in our specific pipeline, a pipeline graphic was constructed and serves as the model for our partnership as well as this paper (see Figure 1). The graphic allows one to see the components of the effort. In the case of the high school/two-year college interface, one sees that curricular alignment is a key with clear articulation. The college inputs Technical Dual Credit classes into the high school to make sure that the curriculum alignment loop is closed successfully. As shown on the chart, trusted articulation pathways must be aligned in terms of curriculum between the two-year and four-year institutions. Importantly, industry’s needs in terms of workers output from the pipeline must be accounted for through engagement in many ways with all three institutional levels. Finally, the financial implications of pathway choice for the student must be clearly conveyed to the student and parents. As the risk of pursuing a pathway through the two-year institution is lowered through clean articulation and barrier removal, the student can take advantage of the cost structure difference. In the case of our partnership, the cost of one course at the four-year university (~ $2,165) is roughly equivalent to the tuition cost of two entire years (~20 courses at $2340) at the two-year college. This fact alone can determine whether a student can attend college, must work during college, and/or exit a bachelor’s program with a reasonable debt load.