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Authors' Note: Although this article focuses on the student recruitment efforts at the University of Texas at El Paso, it should be noted that several technical organizations, including TMS, through its Career Resource Center, and ASM International, through its Action in Education Team, have recognized the need to attract young people to the field of materials. There are also a number of helpful introductory videotapes and series that can be used to attract the interest of young people, including The Infinite Voyage: Miracles by Design; Materials: Engineering the Future; Out of the Fiery Furnace; and The Stuff of Dreams.
INTRODUCTION
Despite the increasingly high-tech nature of life in the United States and an expanding role in industry for materials engineers, there has been a significant national decline in undergraduate enrollment (and number of B.S. degrees awarded) in the materials fields since the mid-1980s. Believing that it is possible for universities to effectively market their materials-related programs to attract bright freshmen,' the Metallurgical and Materials Engineering Department at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) has made reasonable progress in recruiting and retaining prospective engineering students.
Attracting students to materials is only half of the task. Retaining these students in a materials program is equally important. For a new materials engineering student, the support of peers going through the same transition and the opportunity to share information and engage in group study with other students are key ingredients for success.2
THE RECRUITMENT TEAM
The Metallurgical and Materials Engineering Department at UTEP is not the first program to conceptualize and implement a recruitment effort. For example, using numerous visual and demonstration aids, the University of Washington has been successful in its pre-college recruitment efforts to introduce materials to high school students.3 At UTEP, we have also found that slide presentations and videotapes are effective, provided that they are limited to less than five minutes. Demonstrations and presentation antics hold a pre-college student's attention, a critical concern if the student is to listen to and/or retain much of the message.
Comprising student and faculty members, the two-year-old UTEP recruitment team focuses its efforts on a limited number of prospective opportunities to contact students. These initiatives include the following five methods.
High school...