Hands-On Summer Camp to Attract K–12 Students to Engineering Fields

Impact of a Hands-On, Exploratory Engineering Outreach Program on Knowledge and Attitudes of High School Students (RTP)

“…The outreach program was modeled after previous work [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] that has shown the effectiveness of outreach activities on interest in engineering disciplines for women and underrepresented minorities. Anderson and Gilbride [3] and Gilbride et al [4] focused on outreach to women and found the activities were effective at increasing both interest in and awareness of engineering.…”

Board # 102 :Hands-on Summer Workshop to Attract Middle School Students to Engineering (Work in Progress)

“…Additionally, females represent only 20% of all engineering students, (The National Science Board, 2012). According to Yilmaz, Ren, Custer & Coleman, (2010), the number of STEM graduates has been steadily decreasing, while the number of STEM graduates from underrepresented groups; females, Hispanics and African Americans have been decreasing even faster.…”

“…Summer workshop outreach programs where students learn about engineering outside the school environment have been largely successful in increasing student interest in STEM fields (Abaid, Kopman and Porfiri, 2013;Paulino, Babb, Saar, Friesen & Brandon, 2014;Yates, 2013;Yilmaz, Ren, Custer & Coleman, 2010). Findings show that outreach programs targeted at the high school level generally raise awareness and yield more interest in engineering.…”

A Near-space Research Experience for High School Students

“…Review of the literature reveals a number of institutions that conduct outreach on their campus during the summer. However, none of these attempt the technical depth or level of project complexity that is reported here 5,6,7,8,9 .…”