An Outreach Effort The Connections Program

Abstract

(CUA) has an affiliation with the local high schools in the Washington DC area whose goal is to stimulate interest in engineering among high school students. There are currently 14 participating high schools, many of which include a student population with high minority and female enrollment (two of the schools are all-girls). As part of this initiative, CUA is currently funded by the National Science Foundation on a 4 year project called "The Connections Program". Through this program, the affiliated high schools have access to the computing facilities of the University. This includes Internet access, use of CUA's scientific applications (e.g., math and science related applications such as Matlab and Mathematica), and on-line library catalog access. A crucial part of the project is multi-tiered training. An ethics statement and fair usage policy has been drafted to ensure that the provided resources will be used in the appropriate fashion.

The Smarte Enrichment Programs: Perceptions Of Middle School Students About Science And Technology

“…A number of programs for high school students are organized under Tech Prep initiative at Purdue University -Anderson [11] and Penn State University [17]. Other examples of high school programs include topics in computers, microprocessors, mechanical design, U.S. FIRST competition [12,13,14,15]. Also, there have been attempts to involve K-12 teachers in engineering practice [19].…”