2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Research has shown that engaging high school students (grades 9-11) in STEM activities increases their chances of choosing STEM-related disciplines when entering college. This has led to the development of several amazing university-sponsored opportunities including week-long camps, university tours, and faculty/student outreach to local schools to engage, excite, and educate high school students about STEM degrees. One area of engaging high school students that has the greatest impact, and the most likely success in encouraging students to choose a STEM path, is a research experience under the direction of a faculty mentor. One of the authors has witnessed this firsthand having mentored >25 high school students during summer research experiences that ultimately led to the students electing to major in a STEM field; however, the potential overall impact was limited as the author could only mentor so many students per year. The challenge with increasing the number of students getting an experience is that many faculty mentors do not have the time or knowledge on how to recruit and mentor high school students. To address this challenge, the authors developed a high school summer research internship program. The program is designed to minimize the administrative burden on the faculty mentors while also providing a rich educational experience for the students. The program occurs during the summer where the students volunteer in the labs for ~140 hours working on their research project. The research experience is supplemented with workshops led by the authors and other members of X University including safety, research ethics, how maintain a lab notebook, how to read scientific literature, how to analyze data, and effective written and oral presentation. The program has been offered three times during the summers of 2020-2022. 55 students completed the program (17 in 2020, 17 in 2021, and 21 in 2022) with 82% of these students coming from traditionally under-represented minorities in STEM (females, ethnic minorities). Evaluations at the end of the program have indicated that participation in the program strongly influenced the students’ desire to explore a career in engineering. This paper will detail the lessons learned, and future plans, by the authors during the implementation of the program including how to provide the students with a research experience virtually as the first year of the program was dramatically altered due to the COVID-19 pandemic.