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This paper presents information about outreach projects completed by 13 students in a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program offered in an aerospace engineering department at a U.S. midwestern university during summer 2021. The outreach project was a component of the REU program. This paper provides a detailed description of the outreach project goals and procedures and explores the project's impact on the students. Anonymous responses to openended questions show the positive impact the projects had on the students, including the satisfaction they received from designing and completing the projects from start to finish and potentially helping to broaden the participation of underrepresented students in STEM. Using an open-coding data analysis method, four themes based on student responses were identified. These themes include students' positive response towards the outreach project, their increased understanding of others' diverse walks of life, feeling uncomfortable in unfamiliar situations, and gaining more confidence in pursuing their chosen degree. The paper concludes by presenting recommendations for other engineering REU sites considering similar outreach projects for their students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the development of an engineering pathways program for underserved high school students. The innovating Detroit's Robotics Agile Workforce (iDRAW) program is administered by the University of Detroit Mercy and is in its third year of working with two local high schools. The students are predominantly low-income and from populations historically underrepresented in STEM. The goal of the program is to increase interest in STEM-related careers while reducing barriers to entering such fields. The program aims to provide on-ramps to a range of careers across disciplines (mechanical, electrical, software, etc.) requiring different levels of educational attainment (4-yr university, 2-yr college, apprenticeships, etc.). In the first two years of the program, there were 97 qualifying graduates with nearly half going on to study a STEM discipline in college and over a quarter choosing to major in engineering or computer science at a 4-year university. Of the qualifying graduates, 55% were Latinx, 5% were Black, and 37% were Arab American. Preliminary data shows the program correlated with a modest increase in STEM career interest and students perceived the program to help them prepare for their future, though the program might not have had a positive impact on student self-efficacy in STEM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]