Intellectual Merit: This project will support engineering professional society engineering and STEM educational outreach efforts by bringing together engineering society outreach leadership to learn more about effective outreach practices that have the ability to reach girls, including those from underrepresented populations. A primary emphasis of the project is to encourage professional societies to integrate practices that work with diverse audiences into K-12 engineering outreach activities. Enhancing Engineering Society Outreach for All Girls (EESO) will build awareness and identify best practices, based on the research literature and the programming experience of societies that serve underrepresented groups, and share these with EESO participants; those who are leaders in developing and implementing engineering society outreach. A national workshop and an accompanying, sustained web site are the vehicles for delivery.
The EESO national workshop and continued online access provides a framework to support continuous improvement of engineering outreach activities and a basis for engineering societies to develop and enforce quality control for outreach efforts. EESO will add to the outreach knowledge base through identification of outreach cases on proven practices in STEM outreach that emphasize reaching diverse populations, providing practitioners and researchers alike with a single place to identify practices that are effective and also provide STEM outreach modules that can be modified and tested in future studies. It will benefit researchers interested in engineering outreach, in general, and for underrepresented populations and increase researchers? ability to collect and access meta-level data by building capacity to provide a national and comparable data set on the effectiveness of outreach activities.
The proposed project?s objectives address these needs: 1. Build outreach capacity among society staff and volunteers developing and offering programs 2. Engender a culture of assessment in the society outreach community by building assessment capacity among those developing and offering outreach activities 3. Create cultural awareness and integrate proven practices for underrepresented groups into professional society outreach strategic planning and implementation 4. Create a network of knowledgeable society staff and members/leaders committed to developing effective K-12 outreach activities with measurable outcomes
Broader Impacts: EESO creates a cohort of individuals with a knowledge and resource base upon which to develop and implement effective engineering outreach activities for girls. EESO and supporting activities will provide engineering outreach program stakeholders with access to the assessment and capacity building resources they need to be successful by offering a comprehensive workshop and complementary web-site that introduce proven practices, including proven assessment practices and emphasizes integration of diversity into all engineering outreach. Access to these data will allow the implementers of professional society engineering education outreach make better decisions and focus resources to pursue the goal of increasing the numbers of practicing women engineers.
The project includes a Broadening Participation Partnership that consists of EESO leadership in the Society for Women Engineers (SWE), the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) and the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE). This partnership is positioned to work directly with discipline specific engineering societies to ensure that effective diversity objectives and practices are integrated into all outreach planning and activities.
Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professionals have a unique insight to improve participation among future engineers, working collaboratively to create an inclusive, diverse environment. Ultimately, this environment will attract more women and minorities into STEM fields, thus increasing innovation within the workplace and the size of the workforce. Now more than ever, employers must leverage diverse talent to promote fresh ideas, multiple viewpoints, and an improved organizational culture. Enhancing Engineering Society Outreach Workshop became Outreach 4 Change. Outreach 4 Change is a collaboration between the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), and Society of Women Engineers (SWE) to increase the outreach capacity and effectiveness among engineering society leadership, staff, and volunteers who are striving to connect and engage girls in STEM. In-person workshops took place on March 24, 2011; April 26, 2012; June 25, 2012 and December 1, 2012. These events focused on training engineering association leaders, staff, and outreach volunteers. Thought leaders from academia, engineering associations, and industry gave presentations that covered topics in outreach education, including systematic inclusion, culture of assessment, bias literacy, assessment, and proven best practices. The workshops laid the groundwork for greater collaboration among all of the Outreach 4 Change stakeholders and partners. An Outreach 4 Change Competency Model was created. This model contains four areas; collaborate, innovate, assess and facilitate. The four categories each include several specific competencies that an engineering diversity society and/or outreach program should strive to meet. The competency model helped serve as the basis for the online modules which were released earlier in the year (January, 2014). Outreach 4 Change online modules address the project objectives by focusing on assessment, gender and cultural awareness, developing effective programs, and a call for collaboration among all stakeholders in engineering outreach education. The modules are designed to create an awareness of specific topics that support the advancement of girls and women in engineering. The modules include a number of reflective activities that ask the learner to evaluate their organization’s programs. These type of activities help engage the learner in where there may be gaps in their programs. The resources within the modules have been carefully curated by experts in STEM education and social sciences to support those interested in outreach efforts to girls. Outreach 4 Change is a growing community, dedicated to educating and communicating the need for outreach to all girls and the methods to do so effectively. The module objectives are to build the outreach capacity among professional staff and volunteers who develop and offer these programs; engender a culture of assessment in the outreach community; create cultural awareness and integrate proven practices for underrepresented groups into outreach strategic planning and implementation; and create a network of knowledgeable society staff, members, and leaders committed to developing effective K-12 outreach activities with measureable outcomes. Outreach 4 Change's online resources are helping organizations develop greater capacity in the area of outreach, which will ultimately lead to more effective programs. While it is too early to tell what the immediate impact of Outreach 4 Change has had on these programs developed by partner organizations, there has been very positive feedback collected from organizations using the resources.
