Design and implementation of engineering projects for the Women in Applied Science and Engineering (WISE) summer recruiting programs

The Women in Applied Science and Engineering (WISE) Program at Arizona State University provides summer recruiting programs that serve to bridge elementary, secondary, and college level education. In addition to introducing students to career options, these programs spark individual interest and allow students to preview types of courses associated with engineering academics. Attrition studies have reported that women often enter into science, mathematics, and engineering with little information on their discipline and consequently decide to transfer to other majors or forgo receiving their education altogether. Therefore, it is necessary that recruitment programs create curricula that introduce the student to basic engineering concepts and directly expose them to the expectations of the college level curriculum. The WISE summer program curriculum includes several projects designed to allow the student to experience engineering in both social and academic settings. These projects center on understanding concepts of teamwork, problem solving, and analytical evaluation. Specific projects introduce students to several different engineering disciplines and allow them to draw conclusions concerning their similarities and how these disciplines interact with each other. An overview of WISE summer program projects geared toward the college level engineering curriculum is presented and a discussion of methods used to design and implement these projects is included. Specific factors that influence implementation, as well as benefits and shortcomings of the projects, is also discussed.