Classroom instructors' perceptions of site leadership and interest outcomes within a summer engineering program (evaluation) Conference

Fletcher, TL, Ross, MS, Carr, CA et al. (2017). Classroom instructors' perceptions of site leadership and interest outcomes within a summer engineering program (evaluation) . 2017-June

cited authors

  • Fletcher, TL; Ross, MS; Carr, CA; Boyd, B

fiu authors

abstract

  • To help address the issue of underrepresentation of African Americans obtaining engineering degrees and matriculating into engineering industry, the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) launched the Summer Engineering Experience for Kids (SEEK) program in 2007. As of 2015, the program had 17 sites across 16 major U.S. cities. The free 3-week summer camp provides access to engineering education activities through competition based, hands-on curriculum. At each of the locations, four individuals were hired to serve as site leaders to oversee all operations and logistics at the program: 1) Site Director 2) Assistant Site Director 3) Operations Specialist and 4) Data Specialist. Classroom instructors, who are referred to as mentors, were hired at a 6:1 ratio with a total of 3 per class. The site leaders and classroom mentors were primarily comprised of undergraduate and graduate engineering, STEM nonengineering and education majors. During the summer of 2015, instructor surveys and student pre and post assessments were distributed, collected and analyzed by the external evaluator. The instructor survey data was analyzed and findings were shared within one of the three reports provided to NSBE by the external evaluator including the overall, all-sites report, site-specific reports and an internal report. However, several of the 34 questions within the instructor post-program survey, a mix of open-ended and likert scale, were not analyzed by the external evaluator. A quantitative analysis will be conducted using raw data from questions related to classroom instructors' feedback on site leadership performance including areas of management, supervision, their ability to give feedback, professionalism, work ethic and problem solving skills. These results will then be compared to the classroom instructors interest outcomes on the SEEK program. The implications of this research include better understanding the role of leadership during short-term, out-ofschool (OST) engineering programs such as training and professional development and other potential best practices.

publication date

  • June 24, 2017

volume

  • 2017-June