2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Early exposure to engineering is a valuable strategy to ignite interest, curiosity, and enthusiasm among students from a young age. Early exposure to engineering programs - such as after-school activities, career exploration events, guest speakers, and industry visits - can provide engineering concepts and hands-on experiences to help students develop a strong foundation and inspire the next generation of minority engineers, fostering a diverse and innovative workforce.
However, implementing most early exposure to engineering programs in the locations where Native American students reside is challenging. Many Native American communities are in remote or geographically isolated areas, making it difficult to access external resources and hold early exposure to engineering programs regularly. One program that stands out is dual-credit engineering, offering a promising opportunity to expose and reinforce engineering concepts to Native American students.
Navajo Technical University (NTU), a tribal university, partners with a Native American-serving school district, Gallup-McKinley County School (GMCS), to offer a dual-credit engineering program. In this program, 12th-grade students from GMCS take two NTU first-year engineering courses: ENGR 130 - Engineering Graphics (Engineering Design) in the fall semester and ENGR 103 - Introduction to Engineering (which involves a hands-on engineering project and a project report) in the spring semester.
To investigate the program and understand students’ experiences, qualitative analysis of students' reports was conducted using thematic analysis via OpenChatGPT. The results revealed four themes: (1) Fundamental Processes, (2) Challenges in Execution, (3) Teamwork and Collaboration, and (4) Learning and Adaptation. These findings indicate the effectiveness of dual-credit engineering in engaging young Native Americans in engineering and align with ABET students' learning outcomes. The paper details the partnership, course specifics, challenges, and findings from students' perspectives.