In the past three years there has been more awareness by engineering colleges that they need to do more to recruit high-quality students into engineering. The percent of freshman women and minority students in engineering continues to be signifcantly less than that of the overall population and colleges in general. Only about 15% of the high school graduates are sufficiently prepared in math and science for the engineering college curriculum. To address these concerns, many engineering colleges now have mentoring programs with specific high schools and school systems to discuss engineering careers and mentor students on applying to their colleges.
Yet this is not enough. Very few are using their engineering college leadership to help school systems develop systemic change that will increase the academic preparation of students and also decrease the K-12 drop-out rate. What could systemic change look like and how do you go about it? What are best practices related to systemic change? In this month’s ASQ Primary and Secondary Brief, school leaders who attended the ASQ Leadership Summit for Superintendents discuss their ideas on systemic change. The article is available at http://www.asq.org/edu/2009/07/continuous-improvement/in-their-own-words-feedback-from-the-leadership-summit.pdf
If the U.S. is to graduate more engineers into the workforce, we must seriously consider working with school systems to help them with continuous improvement and systemic change. More prepared students for college are needed both in engineering and non-engineering fields. Read this article and perhaps it will help guide some of your own K12 outreach efforts and discussions with the school leaders in your community.
Cindy