Building a pipeline of future college engineering students

As part of Arizona State University´s (ASU) K-12 outreach effort to increase the number of qualified minority students entering the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS), the Office of Minority Engineering Programs (OMEP) has developed a collaborative effort with engineering faculty to expose high school students interested in math and science to the excitement of an engineering discipline. Underrepresented minority students and their teachers from eight high schools that participate in the Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) Program, supported through OMEP, were invited to participate in a “willing worker” engineering assembly project in the ECE 100: Introduction to Engineering Design class. Their teachers who participated were MESA Program advisors. In Spring 95, forty enthusiastic high school students joined college students to get a first hand look at “life as an ASU engineering student”. The comments from all parties involved were so positive that Dr. Barry McNeill, Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering invited 110 students to the classroom in the Fall of 1995. The authors look at this program