Engineering Careers Case Study: K–12 Recruitment Initiative

Abstract

This article discusses a project that implemented several systemic educational reforms in order to determine whether they would increase the awareness of high school students of potential science, math, and engineering careers enough to pursue one of these disciplines in college. The College of Engineering (COE) at San Jose State University (SJSU) in California coordinated the project that included educational reforms that helped increase engineering enrollments over a 5-year period. This vertical slice partnership was unique because it was composed of 12 organizations and educational institutions including the Hewlett Packard Foundation, the COE at SJSU, six K–5 schools, two middle schools, and two high schools in the East San Jose School District. The Hewlett Packard Foundation funded the project and provided personnel who participated in the project. The project demonstrated that the systemic educational reforms that were implemented to modify the delivery methods for math and science courses and the involvement of university faculty members in K–12 education had an impact on high school students selecting engineering as their major in college. This article provides information on how the project was developed, its organizational structure, specific tasks, how tasks were implemented, and the results obtained from the project. In addition to the project increasing engineering enrollments at San Jose State University, the project received the Ron Brown award for industry/education collaborations from the president of the United States.