Beyond the pipeline: building a K-12 engineering outreach program

Outreach to the K-12 community by engineering faculty and students is not a novel idea. There have long been those individuals passionate about sharing the fun and excitement of solving problems, designing and building new devices, and creating what has never existed before. What is new is an increased national awareness of the importance of nurturing connections between the demands of the technological workplace, institutions of higher education, and the K-12 community of teachers and learners. This paper provides guidance on planning and implementing a K-12 engineering outreach program using the outreach component of the Integrated Teaching and Learning (ITL) Program at the College of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Colorado at Boulder (USA), as a case study.