Using Career Pathways to Assimilate High School Students into the Engineering Profession

Career Pathways is a Workforce Development (WFD) program that is supported by State government to instill specific skillsets in K-12 students. Career pathways generally consist of partnerships between K-12 school districts, community colleges, four-year universities and community-based workforce investment boards. The overall goal is to bridge the gap between industry-needed skills and those obtained through formal education. The expected outcome is the transition of students into industry after high school, transfer into a community college, or seek a four-year college degree. Regardless of the career pathway outcome, the WFD program inculcates hands-on, practical skills in participants. These skills were included based on industry feedback about the gap between current graduates’ skills and those expected in the field of practice. The skills were also echoed in the ‘Engineer of 2020’ report by the National Academy of Engineering. As a result, the career pathways include programs and services that addresses aforementioned skill gap and increases the employability of students; particularly in the hightech industry. The overall emphasis of this effort is on the engineering profession, in which the responsibilities and expectations from an employee in the 21st century are significantly different from those required decades ago. At California State University Northridge, the authors have collaborated with a local community college, two local school districts and a local workforce development investment center to create two separate pathways focused on Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship as well as Digital Manufacturing. The first pathway, i.e. Innovation and Entrepreneurship, ingrains an entrepreneurial mindset and up-to-date tools used by industry in all the participants (i.e., future workforce). Through this pathway, students are enabled to keep up with the changing demands of industry in the 21st century. On the other hand, the Digital Manufacturing pathway introduces K-12 students to basic design skills by means of The Engineering Design Process through 3D additive manufacturing. Specifically, participants learn Computer-Aided Design in SolidWorks while gaining hands-on and practical skills in realizing their design using the 3D printing rapid prototyping machines. In addition, students work in groups to gain teamwork skills, collaborate on interdisciplinary projects such assistive technology, and communicate their ideas in visual (e.g., modeling and drawings), oral (e.g., presentations and interactive discussion), and written (e.g. reports) formats. The Engineering Design Process and 3D printing are used as the core pedagogies in this pathway because they have proliferated the biomedical, robotics, and aerospace industries. Thus, the high school students trained in these pathways are gaining and sharpening their technical and interpersonal skills to prepare for successful long-term employment in the engineering practice. In this paper, the authors discuss the development of these pathways and how they are being currently implemented with a focus on continuous improvement. Preliminary results based on preand post-experience survey indicate significant increase in students’ skills in both career pathways.