The mission of the Engineering Ambassador Program, which originated in the College of Engineering at Pennsylvania State University, is to increase the diversity of those seeking engineering degrees and to strengthen the communication and leadership skills of those currently seeking engineering degrees. To increase the diversity, the Program emphasizes placing the right messenger (college engineering students with advanced communication skills) with the right message (engineering contributes to the health, happiness, and safety of our everyday lives) in front of middle and high school classes. In addition, the Program has empowered these messengers with advanced presentation strategies to communicate the message effectively. Numerous faculty and department heads from across the United States are expressing interest in emulating the Ambassadors program at their own institutions. This project entails the organization of a workshop to disseminate the successful Engineering Ambassador Program to 20 more universities.
Intellectual Merit: Despite the many efforts to inform the public about the career opportunities in engineering, there is still a dramatic lack of understanding by many high school students, teachers, and guidance counselors about what engineering is. Another problem, which at first might seem unrelated, is that few opportunities are given to most engineering students for public speaking that takes place outside of the classroom. This lack of public speaking experience by students and lack of grounding of presentation principles taught in the classroom has led to continued comments from industry indicating the need for students to have strong public speaking skills. The intellectual merit of this program lies in addressing both of these problems with one program. First, the program seeks to educate not only the high school students, but also their teachers and guidance counselors, on the opportunities that exist with an engineering degree. In addition, the program provides a unique opportunity for our engineering students to be better educated in advanced communication skills by giving them an out-of-the-classroom public speaking opportunity that will help to provide confidence.
Broader Impacts: The broader impacts of the proposed workshop will be to (1) strengthen the communication skills of those students participating in the Engineering Ambassador Program leading to a more informed public, and (2) recruit a diverse population of students to study engineering by using the messages promoted by the National Academy of Engineering. This workshop also provides an opportunity to establish a national community of Engineering Ambassadors.
To solve today’s engineering challenges in energy, environment, health, and society, a wide variety of solutions are needed that can only be realized by having a diverse group of engineers with strong technical backgrounds. Workforce studies have indicated that the number of those being educated in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields cannot meet the market demands, which may cause even more engineering work to be placed offshore in the future.[i] Compounding the problem, our ranks in engineering are not diverse, and we are losing access to talented resources. The Engineering Ambassador Program, which originated in the College of Engineering at Penn State, is a professional development program with an outreach mission. To increase the diversity, the Program emphasizes placing the right messenger (college engineering students with advanced communication skills) with the right message (engineering contributes to the health, happiness, and safety of our everyday lives)[ii] in front of middle and high school classes. In addition, the Program has empowered these messengers with advanced presentation strategies to communicate the message effectively.[iii] Numerous faculty and department heads from across the United States have inquired about this particular program with the intention of wanting to emulate it at their own institutions. The NSF support was used for the Engineering Ambassador’s first national workshop to disseminate the knowledge on how to formulate a successful Engineering Ambassador Program to 17 universities in the United States. The Engineering Ambassadors National Workshop catalyzed a network of universities joining the effort to change the conversation about engineering. The workshop offered an explanation of the existing programs, communication and leadership training for future ambassadors, and faculty preparation for launching a new engineering ambassadors program at their university. The workshop led to the establishment of a national network of engineering ambassador programs. The broader impacts of the workshop include (1) strengthening the communication skills of those students that participated in the Engineering Ambassador Program leading to a more informed public, and (2) recruiting a diverse population of students to study engineering by using the messages promoted by the National Academy of Engineering. [i] Carnevale, A.P. and S.J. Rose. 2011. The Undereducated American. Available at http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/undereducatedamerican.pdf. Accessed October 1, 2011. [ii] National Academy of Engineering, Changing the Conversation, 2008. [iii] Alley, Michael. (2003). The Craft of Scientific Presentations. New York: Springer-Verlag.
