Engineering outreach teams: K-12 outreach at North Carolina State University

The Women in Engineering Program at NC State University (USA) coordinates visits to elementary, middle and high schools by students and faculty of the College of Engineering. An "on-call" team is maintained that can travel to schools upon request. Recruiting is a goal of the teams, but not the major goal. The primacy focus is to educate and excite students about engineering, science and mathematics, building a base in the community for grater appreciation and understanding of these important disciplines. A special emphasis is placed on women and minorities by including on the teams a majority of women and/or minority students and faculty. This enables the team members to serve as role models for the children with which they come in contact. This modeling will be accomplished in a passive way; no mention is made at the time of the visits, or before or after, about why the teams are composed the way they are. The teams present engineering to students through active, hands-on workshop activities. Previous experience has shown these types of presentations to be particularly effective in accomplishing the desired goals. After the first year of implementation, the teams enjoy a measurable success: they are being invited back to the same schools that they visited last year! Evaluation of team performance and effectiveness is accomplished primarily through feedback from students, teachers and administrators at the visited institutions. The letters from students saying things like, "I was going to be a ballet dancer, but I think I will be an electric scientist like you now," are particularly nice to receive! A file of such evaluations is maintained. The teams "debrief" after each visit to determine an internal measure of effectiveness.