GSE/DIF- Enhancing Engineering Society Outreach For All Girls (EESO) Workshop Project: Empowering Professional Engineering Societies through Expertise in and Use of Best Practices

Society Of Women Engineers, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

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.