EAGER: Co-Creating a Research Agenda to Evaluate University Ambassador Programs' Impact on Engineering Identity of K-12 Students

Trustees Of Boston University, Boston

Investigators

Abstract

A diverse workforce leads to more creative problem solving and is more socially just. Though great strides have been made to improve diversity, engineering remains predominantly white and male. Universities are attempting to increase diversity by conducting engineering outreach. Specifically, university students visit kindergarten through 12th grade classrooms and engage in discussions and activities intended to motivate student interest in engineering. However, what remains to be seen is if, and to what extent, these programs successfully increase the likelihood that students from traditionally underrepresented populations are pursuing engineering degrees and careers. This project seeks to bring together a diverse spectrum of stakeholders involved in engineering outreach such that a comprehensive, long-term research agenda can be developed. Through this agenda, researchers and program administrators will ultimately become better able to evaluate and assess whether programs effectively encourage diverse populations to pursue engineering careers, as well as help programs employ approaches that are more impactful. The researchers seek to understand the long-term impact that ambassador programs have on engineering pathways and whether these programs help traditionally underserved students develop engineering identities. There is a need for intentional and longitudinal research to determine whether ambassador programs have real and lasting impact. Longitudinal studies are time and resource intensive and, the variation that exists across ambassador programs make small-scale studies only marginally useful. The engineering outreach community is often underfunded for the scale of social change it seeks to accomplish and conducting deep evaluation will allow for the better use of resources. Through research, the most effective strategies can be pinpointed and used to develop more effective outreach programming. Creating a unified research agenda that a diverse spectrum of stakeholders buy into, while challenging, has numerous benefits including: the development of an evaluation protocol that is used by programs across the county; the creation of relationships between K-12 and university personnel that results in longitudinal studies on engineering identity; and the development of models for scalable, effective program implementation. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.