Search

Engaging minority and underrepresented students in STEM fields in high school is not difficult, but providing the student with long-term outlooks in STEM fields in which the students can see themselves is very difficult. Most students do not know anyone who is currently in a STEM career. STEM professionals volunteer at a good rate, but do not serve as mentors as frequently as those in other professions. A definite key to closing the STEM graduate gap is enabling youth to view themselves in a STEM career. Mentoring helps the student bridge the gap between where they are in high school and the where they see themselves in the future. The guidance provided by a mentor through a student's secondary academic career and transition into a post-secondary setting is critical to minority and underrepresented students due to the lack of this guidance in their social circle. High impact STEM mentoring is needed for mentors to have a lasting impact on our nation. This paper will focus on converting STEM professional volunteers into roles as mentors. This paper will describe efforts to increase the number of mentors in a mid-sized urban community. The paper will discuss the levels of commitment and the level of intensity of desired by the mentors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the need for engineers increases, there is a parallel decrease in public funding of higher education. The press for increased efficiency in the system of higher education is inevitable. Although each college of engineering has its own unique mission, there may be exemplar programs that can provide guidance to them for the continuous improvement of engineering education. A Data Envelopment based model is developed using the number of faculty as the educational system input and B.S., M.S., PhD degrees, and research expenditures as measures of output for colleges of engineering in the U.S. Data was drawn from the ASEE data mining tool over a three year period (2010-2012) for 186 colleges of engineering. A non-dominated set of 24 efficient engineering colleges was identified and compare with the set of less efficient colleges. The relationship between the level of funded research and PhD production is the same for the efficient and less efficient programs. There is a marked difference between the efficient set and others in the relationship between BS and MS production and funded research. In the less efficient programs, there appears to be no relationship between the number of degrees granted and the amount of research funding. A regression surface fit to these programs and demonstrates the range of efficient programs. Implications for individual programs and further developments are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]