2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Engagement in Practice: Developing Local School System Partnerships for Large-Scale Engineering Design Challenges, the Get Outside And Learn (GOAL) Program

Presented at Community Engagement Division 2 - Engagement in Practice Lightning Round: Equitable Engagement and Transformative Education

This engagement in practice paper addresses the development of school system partnerships for the Get Outside And Learn (GOAL) program. This outreach program provides hands-on physical componentry and design challenge curriculum that engages middle and high school students from historically underrepresented and first-generation-college populations. The program was initially conceived during the height of the COVID pandemic, and over 5000 kits have been manufactured and distributed in the first 2.5 years. A major feature of the kit program are culminating events, the scope of which varies from large (600-700 participants) to small (60-100 participants). Challenge events provide a venue to familiarize participants with the University of University of Maryland (UMD) and pathways toward higher education while building excitement and school spirit in a team-based engineering competition.

This paper discusses the rapid development of two major school system collaborations in neighboring counties of UMD. The first consideration is the integration into the school system’s curriculum and building the program within the schools’ existing infrastructures. One school system implements the kits through a two week summer bridge program for students entering 9th grade, and the second incorporates the kits into their coursework during the academic year. The UMD team provides implementation support to teachers and administrators. Teacher co-development of the componentry and curriculum is a major program characteristic. Another element of discussion is the progression of the culminating event logistics through the evolution of the COVID restrictions spanning implementations of fully online, hybrid, in-person off-campus, and finally toward in-person on-campus events. The funding structure and necessary on and off campus partnerships are presented along with current challenges. Future growth directions and expansion are described, including additional school system integrations, future co-development with stakeholders, teacher support communities, an online resource library, program evaluation, and international expansion.

Authors

Dr. Vincent Nguyen University of Maryland, College Park [biography]

Vincent P. Nguyen is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is a founding member of the Environmental and Socially Responsible Engineering (ESRE) group who work to integrate and track conscientious engineering aspects throughout the undergraduate educational experience across the college. His efforts include formally integrating sustainability design requirements into the mechanical engineering capstone projects, introducing non-profit partnerships related to designs for persons with disabilities, and founding the Social/Environmental Design Impact Award. He manages several outreach and diversity efforts including the large-scale Get Out And Learn (GOAL) engineering kit program that reaches thousands of local K-12 students.
Jennifer Bishop University of Maryland, College Park [biography]

Jen Kuntz is the Assistant Director - Outreach and Recruitment for the Women in Engineering Program at the University of Maryland, A. James Clark School of Engineering, where she draws upon her 10+ years of STEM and Maker education experience to inspire future engineers. Jen has a Bachelor's degree in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of Maryland College Park.
Dr. Paige E. Smith University of Maryland, College Park [biography]

Paige Smith, Ph.D. is the director of the Women in Engineering Program in the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland. She has over 20 years of experience with recruiting and retaining diverse populations in engineering. Under Paige's leadership, the Women in Engineering Program has received many awards for retention and outreach programming. From 2017-2020 she served as the Program Director for Broadening Participation in Engineering in the Engineering Directorate at the National Science Foundation. While at NSF she also served in a two-year rotation as the Implementation Team co-lead for NSF INCLUDES. Paige is a Past President of the Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN). Paige earned her Ph.D. and M.S. in industrial and systems engineering and B.S. in engineering science and mechanics from Virginia Tech.
Rebecca Kenemuth

Download paper (710 KB)

Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.

» Download paper

« View session

For those interested in:

Broadening Participation in Engineering and Engineering Technology
Pre-College