Proposal to Attend a Workshop on "Improving and Assessing the Impact of Programs to Encourage High School Girls to Pursue Science, Engineering, and Mathematics" Santa Clara University, August 5 - 7, 1999

Lee Ellen Harper

Institute for Systems Research

University of Maryland, College Park

The University of Maryland’s Institute for Systems Research (ISR) offers an enrichment program for rising high school seniors modeled after the National Science Foundation Young Scholars program it ran from 1991 through 1997. "Young Scholars in Engineering and Science" (YSES), for which ISR currently is seeking alternate external funding, builds on the previous program’s commitment to diversity and outreach to female students and students of color. It has always been, and will continue to be, a coeducational program, but principles of feminist assessment are being integrated into the evaluation piece of the program.

YSES introduces pre-college students to a cross-disciplinary spectrum of engineering and math-based scientific fields through a balanced exposure to classroom, laboratory, and field activities, integrating popular perceptions of technology-based occupations with a nuanced perspective on the applications of technology in scholarship and work. If they have not already had experience with interactive technology, Young Scholars become familiar with it in class and in their laboratory projects; this is especially important exposure for girls and students of color from underserved community schools. While individual student contributions are recognized and rewarded in class and laboratory work, the emphasis is on inclusive pedagogy, teamwork, and collaborative group activities. The first-year engineering curriculum offers an environment that acknowledges and rewards a variety of student learning styles.

The YSES experience is designed to help high school seniors understand and negotiate the multi-level steps involved in applying to and being accepted into college; financing a college education; choosing a major from an array of options

that is tempting, daunting, or both at once; deciding whether to go on to graduate school or directly into work; and learning to recognize and evaluate the factors that will determine an individual student’s choice. Especially for girls and for all students of color, these may include being discouraged by teachers and counselors from considering engineering or science; finding relatively fewer mentors and models among faculty, teaching assistants, and junior and senior undergraduate students" and encountering more "filter" than "pump’ courses at the introductory level.

ISR and the YSES program staff are committed to encouraging female students and both female and male students of color to pursue studies and careers in engineering and math-based science. American business, including high-technology industry, is keenly aware that "diversity works," and is seeking a multiethnic, multicultural workforce. Colleges and universities, contending with legal challenges to affirmative action, may find themselves trying to keep pace with industry in this respect; the University of Maryland, however, has been exceptionally innovative and proactive in designing and implementing its Diversity Initiative. (An interactive workshop on campus diversity is one of the key program workshops.)

Assessment is integral to the program. Student evaluations currently are conducted midway through the program, principally to identify and correct any problems, and at the end of the six-week summer session, when participants are asked to evaluate the program’s content, research interactions, faculty, student, and staff participation, and the elements of the program they found most valuable as well those about which they were less enthusiastic. Individual elements of the program may be repeated, replaced, or modified based on their usefulness and benefits. (Input from instructional and laboratory project staff also is solicited and welcomed, and the staff have developed an instrument to gather these valuable data.)

While recruiting girls and students of color for the Young Scholars program has been done on a principled basis, efforts to date to recruit them into the engineering profession have not focused on gender differences. The staff are interested not only in creating a summer climate that encourages female and minority students to think seriously about majoring in engineering in college, but

also in helping them build a reserve of self-confidence and ambition to draw on when their choices and abilities are questioned.

Touching base periodically with alumnae/i during their senior high school year provides valuable information for gauging the value of their experience; staff visit past-year participants in their schools, principally to meet with students who are interested in applying for admission to the program, but also to talk informally with previous participants and their teachers about changes in their interests, motivation, and school performance.

Do the YSES program’s strategies ¾ a proactive approach to recruiting a diverse class or participants, an emphasis on teamwork and collaboration in the classroom and laboratories, and creating opportunities for interaction with a multicultural faculty and student body in ISR ¾ work? From 1992 through 1998, students were tracked only through the spring of their senior high school year; beginning in 1999, however, the program staff will initiate a survey project to collect detailed data from the 1995, 1996, 1997, and 1998 participants (who likely are still in college or will matriculate in fall 1999), and more general data from the 1991 - 1994 participants. The survey data should give us a snapshot of how many Young Scholars attended college, majored in engineering or science, graduated with a degree in one of these disciplines, and currently are working in an engineering or scientific field (or have gone on to graduate study, although this is happening less and less frequently).

The short-term data, connecting Young Scholars participants’ summer experience with their college choices and prospective majors, suggest that the program has a positive effect for at least the year following. ISR has provided a summer Young Scholars experience for 166 high school students from 1991 through 1998. Sixty-nine (69), or 41.5%, were female; ISR’s recruitment and enrollment of girls in Young Scholars programs far exceeds the 8.5% participation of women in engineering professions, suggesting a promisingly wide opening to the engineering pipeline for girls and young women. The University of Maryland is "among the top ten baccalaureate institutions of female science and engineering PhDs during the period from 1989 to 1993. (NSF, 1996) African-American and Hispanic students have constituted 19 percent of Young Scholars participants, and this mirrors the University of Maryland’s success in institutionalizing its Diversity Initiative: 14.5% of College Park undergraduates are African-American, and 4.6% are Hispanic. In addition, Asian-American females, a seldom-acknowledged underrepresented minority in higher education (Hune, 1998), made up 30% of the Young Scholars population over eight years. (Indices of selectivity and diversity are attached.)

Tracking of participants has been carried out through their senior high school year and initial acceptance into college. Of the 146 participants in 1991 through 1997, 101 (69%) were self-declared engineering, math, or math-based science majors; 45 (31%) were self-declared "other field" or undecided majors, or they did not report their major selection.

However, because Young Scholars have not previously been tracked formally after their senior high school year, we have never developed a profile of a "successful Young Scholar," assessing alumnae/i achievement according to benchmarks or expectations at various stages of their careers beyond high school. To the extent possible, as indicated above, data will be captured and synthesized for all classes of participants from 1991 through the most recent year; staff will contact their schools, for example, to request public information on alumni.

In addition, former students or their families do share news, sometimes years after completing the program, and siblings of previous Young Scholars have joined the program, creating a mini-network for collection of data. Much of the anecdotal, qualitative information we receive is about young women: from the Tandy Technology Scholar (class of 1997) to the student who felt so empowered by her experience in ENES IOOA that she dared apply to much more competitive colleges than she'd intended to-and was accepted. (In each case, this information was conveyed, with deep pleasure, by the student's mother.)

The underlying purpose of creating the profile will be to evaluate the performance and measure the success of the YSES program itself in influencing students' long-range choices, not to determine or rate the successfulness of individual students. Equity "evaluations [must] examine student outcomes beyond school achievement. Student interest in SMET [science, mathematics, engineering, and technology], an appreciation for the usefulness Of SMET in many professions and in everyday life, and an inclination to apply SMET concepts and processes to solve problems and understand novel situations when not required to do so are outcomes consistent with [reform] initiatives." (Heck, 1998)

The program staff plan to begin by not simply polling students on their college and major selections at the end of their senior high school year (although they will continue to do this), but by developing instruments that incorporate new scholarship on women and minorities (including pre-college) and keys to their persistence in science and engineering. These could include surveys of students midway through their first year, at the end of their sophomore year of college, and upon graduation from college and embarking on either graduate study or a career. The surveys would ask for detailed information, including affective and intangible factors in students’ decisions. If a pattern emerged of time to graduation longer than the traditional four years, adjustments would be made (and reasons explored). This should enable the YSES program staff to sketch a profile of a typical Young Scholar at various stages beyond her/his high school graduation.

The data themselves will shape the story; because this kind of sequential tracking and detailed surveying of Young Scholars graduates has never been done before, we do not know what they will tell us: how many stayed in engineering/science majors through college, how many left and for what reasons, how many are satisfied or dissatisfied with their choices, or, finally, how these numbers will compare to national data on persistence and completion.

The data, together with emerging scholarship on what works well and what does not, may also suggest both substantive and structural changes in the program. We believe that the YSES program fills a critical need in within engineering education by providing pre-college exposure to the range of engineering disciplines, environment and research. It is consistent with the goals of giving promising secondary students experience with undergraduate engineering coursework, fostering confidence in their ability to pursue engineering in college and cultivating their interest and ambition to do so; encouraging girls and students of color to consider studying engineering; helping high school students visualize themselves as engineers and scientists; and providing an experience in which students can also inspire their peers to consider study engineering, math, or physical science.

There is more to be done, however, and program staff and faculty colleagues currently are exploring ways to offer pre-engineering remedial education to underprepared undergraduate students, as one means of increasing persistence and completion rates among community college transfer students. (This project is in the early pre-proposal stage and its shape, size, and kinds of outputs may change over time, but the focus on benefiting underrepresented students in science and engineering is fixed.) The results of the initial Young Scholar alumnae/i surveys will be useful in looking at the subsequent college careers of female and minority students within this demographic and applying lessons learned to a new, possibly linked program.

Works cited:

Heck, Daniel J. "Evaluating Equity in Statewide Systemic Initiatives: Asking the Right Questions." Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering. Volume 4, Numbers 2 & 3 (1998).

Hune, Shirley. Asian Pacific American Women in Higher Education: Claiming Visibility and Voice. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 1998.

McTighe Musil, Caryn (ed.), Students at the Center: Feminist Assessment. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges (1992).

Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 1996. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation, 1998.

No. of applications Accepted offer of admission

1991 86 15 (17%)

1992 40 20 (50%)

1993 85 20 (24%)

1994 128 21 (16%)

1995 50 20 (40%)

1996 62 25 (40%)

1997 110 25 (23%)

1998 32 20 (62%)

1999 45 25 (56%)

191 participants

• female: 79 (41%)
• male: 112 (59%)
• African-American/Hispanic: 37 (19%)
• Asian-American female: 50 (26%)

146 participants

• Tracking through senior high school year/acceptance into college
• 101 (69%) self-declared engineering, math, math-based science majors
• 45 (31%) self-declared other field or undecided majors/major selection not reported