2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The University of Washington Tacoma (UWT) is an urban-serving university and educates a diverse student population. Among them, transfer students from community colleges count for the majority of new student enrollment. Engineering programs on campus have expanded quickly in the past 5 years; however, the Computer Engineering (CompE) program, the first engineering program established in the School of Engineering and Technology (SET), underwent a noticeable drop of enrollment in the past years – the number of female students is no exception. One thing we noticed during the recruiting process is that some female students (including some first-generation students) are confused by the term ‘computer’ which they took for granted the same as ‘programming’. As one of the attempts of recruiting process, to help students get a deeper understanding of the Computer Engineering discipline and learn the difference between Computer and other engineering programs, a free half-day workshop is planned and organized. The workshop targets 30 female and minority students who are interested in STEM disciplines and currently attending community colleges in the area. During the event, attendees learn topics including (1) how to use a breadboard, (2) what is an RLC circuit, (3) how to describe the circuit behavior, and (4) how to use Arduino to implement feedback control of the capacitor’s voltage. These topics are carefully chosen to align with our CompE curriculum and require only basic knowledge of physics and calculus. To assess the outcomes, attendees are asked to do an entry survey, and a follow-up exit survey, before and after the event, respectively. Data is collected and analyzed to see if the event could help attendees improve their understanding of Computer Engineering discipline and promote their interest in transferring to our CompE program for further study. Results are shared in this paper, with a summary including future plans.