No abstract

Engineering K-12 education outreach programs provide a unique opportunity for undergraduate engineers to develop communication and leadership skills as well as build self-confidence. Recently, there has been an engineering education outreach surge at many universities across the country. While the main goal of these programs is to assist educators in incorporating engineering into the K-12 curriculum, there are offshoot benefits to the undergraduate students who participate in outreach efforts, especially females. Capitalizing on a student's fresh engineering knowledge and young ambitions to make an impact, outreach programs send undergraduates into K-12 classrooms to introduce the engineering discipline to young children. Female engineers demonstrate a large interest in these outreach efforts, and subsequently enhance their overall undergraduate engineering experience. Beyond the initial self-satisfaction of working with young children, which gratifies the female instinct, the young women engineers are able to gain a greater confidence in the technical discipline that is often difficult to obtain in the male-dominated college classroom environment. Tufts University offers this opportunity through the Center for Engineering Educational Outreach, and in the following paper, the participating female engineers account their enhanced leadership, communication, and technical skills as a direct result of outreach.