Ways That Engineers Can Get Involved In Recruiting Future Materials Scientists and Engineers
- PDF / 66,155 Bytes
- 6 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 32 Downloads / 172 Views
Ways That Engineers Can Get Involved In Recruiting Future Materials Scientists and Engineers Stacy H. Gleixner Dept. of Chemical & Materials Engineering, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192-0082 ABSTRACT For materials science and engineering departments across the country, recruitment of students is a critical concern. To increase enrollment, students’ interest in materials science needs to be sparked early, preferably before they begin college. However, many entering college students have never heard of the major and/or are unsure of what a career in materials science would be like. There are many excellent resources that have been developed to target this problem directly including comprehensive career resources on the web, videos describing careers in materials engineering, and teaching materials developed for middle and high school teachers. One of the greatest resources is to have materials scientists and engineers interact directly with middle and high school students. The industry professionals can convey the aspects of the field that excite them and inform students about career opportunities in materials. Many programs already exist on a national or local level to facilitate this interaction. This paper will catalog the different programs available for engineers to become involved in their local schools or communities including advising engineering projects, visiting classrooms, providing tours of their company, or hosting a student or teacher as an intern. The paper will also detail resources available online and through professional societies to assist in developing materials based handson activities and demonstrations. INTRODUCTION Since the mid 1980’s there has been a decrease in the number of students graduating with BS degrees in engineering from US institutions, Figure 1 [1]. The decline is despite an increase in college graduates overall. In fall of 1995, only 6.4% of American freshmen chose engineering as their probable career. This is the lowest percentage since 1975 [2]. The decrease in engineering graduates poses a critical concern when compared with the fact that the jobs for engineers have increased and are predicted to continue increasing. Studies by the National Science Foundation indicate that the number of new science and engineering positions will increase 51% (1.9 million jobs) during the period of 1998-2008. This is four times the rate for all occupations [3]. This has stimulated a strong recruitment effort from academia and industry to interest K-12 students in engineering and to retain them through graduation. Figure 2 shows the BS engineering graduates from US institutions by major [1]. Embedded in this data is the overall decline in engineering students. To factor that out of the comparison of engineering majors, Figure 3 plots graduates of specific engineering majors as a percentage of the overall engineering graduates that year [1]. This data shows several significant trends when considering recruitment and retention strategies. The first is that number of graduates in al
Data Loading...
