Undergraduate Students Benefits from Involvement in K-12 Outreach

Abstract

Boulder in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering (CEAE) and Director for the Engineering Plus program. She has served as the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Education in the CEAE Department, as well as the ABET assessment coordinator. Professor Bielefeldt was also the faculty director of the Sustainable By Design Residential Academic Program, a living-learning community where students learned about and practice sustainability. Bielefeldt is also a licensed P.E. Professor Bielefeldt's research interests in engineering education include service-learning, sustainable engineering, social responsibility, ethics, and diversity. Dr. Greg Rulifson PE, USAIDGreg is currently an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow. Greg earned his bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering with a minor in Global Poverty and Practice from UC Berkeley where he acquired a passion for using engineering to facilitate developing communities' capacity for success. He earned his master's degree in Structural Engineering and Risk Analysis from Stanford University. His PhD work at CU Boulder focused on how student's connections of social responsibility and engineering change throughout college as well as how engineering service is valued in employment and supported in the workplace. He taught in the Humanitarian Engineering program at the Colorado School of Mines from 2015 to 2018.

Middle School Teachers and Undergraduate Mentors Collaborating for Culturally Relevant STEM Education

“…The positive impact of mentoring relationships is largely dependent upon the extent to which mentors and mentees share similar cultural backgrounds and shared values and beliefs (Aikens et al, 2017; Eby et al, 2008). Research shows that when engineering undergraduates engage in mentoring activities such as K-12 outreach efforts, there are clear benefits for both the K-12 students, including increases in students’ interest and knowledge in engineering (Yowell et al, 2013) and the engineering undergraduates themselves (Bielefeldt & Rulifson, 2020). We intentionally partnered undergraduate mentors of color with teachers and students as a way to center historically marginalized voices and perspectives that are often absent in STEM fields.…”