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Abstract
The Industrial Engineering (IE) profession needs more post-secondary students who want to be engineers, who can because they have the knowledge, skills, and messaging necessary to be successful along the way. Per ASEE, in 2021, 23.6% of BS degrees in engineering were awarded to women; at Iowa State University, the percentage of women studying IE ranged from ~30-38% from 2011-2021, leaving a significant, untapped source of potential IEs. While many high school students are dissuaded from pursuing engineering because of insufficient math/science prerequisites, an additional challenge for IE is that students have never heard of the profession. K-12 educators have significant influence on students' career considerations. With NASA funding, this project's first objective is creating and offering a state-approved professional development course for license renewal credit, to be offered the first time in June 2024. In each offering, thirty K-12 educators will experience IE at Iowa State University with hands-on activities, lesson planning with faculty, and interactions with alumni who work at/with NASA and other space-related companies like SpaceX and Collins Aerospace. The second project objective is creating lesson(s), example(s), and messaging about IE to share with K-12 educators. With more K-12 educators who understand, appreciate, and teach students about the importance of IE, we will increase the number of students ready to apply to first-year engineering programs and thus, increase the number of students, including women, pursuing IE careers. This paper shares the fully developed course, K-12 lessons, logistics, and other information for other IE departments to use.
Keywords
K-12, Pipeline, Recruiting, STEM Curriculum, and Women
1. Introduction
NASA, Iowa State University's (ISU's) College of Engineering (CoE), and ISU's Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering (IMSE) share a common need: more people who want to follow the educational progression required to and through each entity, who can because they are prepared to be successful along the way. Currently, the number of engineering students/professionals who make it through this progression is lower than all three entities would like. The question is how to increase it. We know that career influences begin early in life, affecting the long-term options available to students, and consequently reducing the available population along the way (Figure 1). While influences on long-term academic and professional career decision-making begin...