The Detroit Area Pre-College Engineering Program (DAPCEP) is a request for a Youth-Based project to engage students in activities that will increase their access to information technology within the context of engineering and increase their opportunities to explore related college and career paths. The students use information technology to solve engineering problems. The focus of the project is on promoting fluency with information technology concepts and skills within the context of engineering. The project targets 120 African American and Latino students and 180 parents in a series of planned courses for 7th and 9th grades in automotive engineering. Students will receive 136 contact hours per year while parents receive 18 contact hours per year. DAPCEP is a three-year initiative to implement a two-year curriculum, with the third year of NSF support being used to support year one of the two-year curriculum for a new cycle. Students participate in the program for two years, 3 hours each Satruday for 6 weeks and for 4 weeks during the summer. Students will have the opportunity to stay on the University of Detroit campus for one of the two years of the project. The project has four major components: recruitment strategies, student courses, parent/guardian workshops and information dissemination.
