Creating Partnerships Between Your University and Community-based Out-of-School Time Programs to Improve the STEM Pipeline

摘要

Foundation, Loyola Marymount University's College of Science and Engineering developed a community outreach program with the goal of increasing the pipeline of girls and underrepresented minorities studying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) at the college level.To accomplish this goal, we started the Science and Engineering Community Outreach Program (SECOP).SECOP is a two-week residential pre-college summer school program with a focus on science and engineering.Engineering and mathematics faculty provide a similar curriculum taught in Engineering 101 and Pre-calculus College courses.The afternoon classes are project-oriented.Students design mousetrap cars using SolidWorks, and build their cars in the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory.The high school students purchase supplies for the mousetrap car from Home Depot and must keep their budget to $10.At night, students work on group projects that include designing and building robots using LEGO Mindstorms NXT.To recruit students, we created a partnership between our College and five communitybased out-of-school time programs in Southern California.By working with community organizations, we have reached highly motivated students who have a strong aptitude for science and mathematics.Over the past 11 years, 233 students from 73 different high schools in the Greater Los Angeles Area have participated in SECOP.We have received over $500.000 in funding from foundations and engineering-based corporations.The demographics of the high school students include 140 females (60%), and 93% African American, Hispanic or Native American.The outcomes for the students who participated in SECOP have been outstanding.We have collected data on the alumni who have graduated high school and 4-6 years after they have graduated college.We contacted the alumni by phone and searching for them on facebook.Of the students who attended SECOP and now have graduated from high school, 99% have or are attending college.Sixty-six percent have select STEM majors in college and 39% selected engineering in particular.On a recent search of the alumni from 2001-2005 with an 80% return rate, we found that 97% have graduated from college and 29% have gone onto graduate or professional school including 3 in medical school, 1 in dental school, 1 in law school, 4 working on PhDs and 13 working toward masters or having completed masters degrees.Seventeen (22%) of the college graduates are working as professional engineers, architects or computer scientists.This article discusses the methods used to develop a very valuable and meaningful community outreach program that continues to achieve its goal of helping improve the pipeline of students deciding to study STEM in college and going onto STEM careers.