Bringing The K 12 Stakeholders Onto The Engineering Education Team

Abstract

The enhanced global perspectives brought on by exploding information technologies have precipitated dramatic changes in industry. Recognizing that suppliers and customers are stakeholders in the product realization process and bringing them onto the production team has resulted in significant improvement in quality and efficiency.Engineering education would do well to follow this model. Communication and cooperation between colleges of engineering and those who hire our graduates are expanding everywhere. Now we must give greater attention to our suppliers. We can no longer afford to allow our K-12 suppliers to "throw high school graduates over-the-wall" to colleges of engineering resulting in high rejection and dropout rates.Utah's Governor has recently called for a doubling of graduates from Utah's colleges of engineering within five years and tripling in eight. This paper describes some of the initiatives underway at Utah State University to motivate, guide, and help create a more seamless experience for students who could potentially do well in engineering.