Initiation of Summer Camp Program as Outreach and Recruiting Tool

Abstract

For the past three summers, the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) has hosted a summer camp program for area high school students. The weeklong, nonresidential program is open by application to rising high school juniors and seniors. The goals of the program are (1) to increase general awareness of the field of materials engineering among participants and the larger community, (2) to increase the awareness of students and parents of the specific opportunities available to study engineering at UAB, and (3) to recruit students to the materials engineering program at UAB. The paper will discuss the methods used to evaluate the efficacy of the program, as well as best practices and lessons learned since the program's inception. Since the author initiated the program during her first year as a faculty member, the use of rigorous evaluation methods has been important to justifying the time and expense of the program, as well as its value in her tenure portfolio.

The Effectiveness of Engineering Camps as Pre-college Recruitment Tools

“…Participants from all three camps also indicated significantly greater interest in attending the host institution (p= 0.02, p=0.03, and p=0.001 for the URM male camp, the female only camp, and the co-ed camp, respectively). These results suggest that these camps may be serving as effective recruitment tools for the host institution and engineering program, which follows some trends in recruitment experienced by other institutions [3], [4], [5].…”

“…Engineering camps are offered by a variety of institutions including museums, private foundations, and colleges and universities [2]. When engineering camps are hosted by a college and university, not only do the engineering camps provide the opportunity to recruit more students to engineering, but they also serve as a recruitment tool for the host institution [3]. In order to meet the needs expressed by PCAST, engineering programs would have to recruit high school students into engineering and retain these students through graduation from engineering programs.…”

“…In order to meet the needs expressed by PCAST, engineering programs would have to recruit high school students into engineering and retain these students through graduation from engineering programs. Existing research suggests that engineering camps can serve as a moderately successful recruitment tool for the host institution [3], [4], [5]. In addition to engineering camps, camps of other disciplines, such as pharmacy camps, have experienced similar success in recruiting participants to both the discipline and the host university [6].…”

Work in Progress: Leveraging a Virtual Precollege Summer Coding Day Camp to Promote DEI in Recruiting Students to Computer Science and Information Technology

“…The literature evidences that the impact of summer programs in increasing interest in STEM fields is significant [1], [2], [3], [4]. Additionally, [5], [6], [7] confirm that well organized, engaging and experiential summer camps are useful for targeted recruiting. With this understanding, the Lion's Code Camp began in summer 2019 as a face-to-face camp on the main campus of Southeastern Louisiana University and utilized the suggestions of [8], on how to organize and make the camp fun.…”