Outreach summer camps, particularly those focused on increasing the number of women in engineering, are commonplace. Some camps take the approach of a broad survey of engineering as a whole, while others focus on one specific discipline. Within the discipline-specific camps, there is a high degree of variability in curriculum and structure. This is apparent when considering if and how engineering design is built into the camp structure. While many studies have investigated the impact of outreach camps on engineering self-confidence among participants, few studies have sought to understand how the camp curriculum as a whole can influence these outcomes.
To begin to understand the connection between outreach camp curriculum and engineering self-confidence among participants, we studied outreach camps targeted to high school women that varied in the incorporation of design into their structure. We chose to study three camps: (1) a design-focused camp, (2) a design-incorporated camp (run by the authors), and a (3) design-absent camp. All three camps were at the same university but based in different engineering disciplines. Results from pre-post survey Wilcoxon Signed Rank tests showed that design-focused and design-incorporated camps were able to improve students’ perspective of what engineering is (p
Kaitlin is currently an Academic Development Specialist at Ansys. She received her PhD at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign under Professor Paul Braun. Her research was split: focusing on manipulating eutectic material microstructures and engineering outreach.
Dr. Nicole Johnson-Glauch is a lecturer in the Materials Engineering Department at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California. Her current research interests are in how visual representations help or hinder student learning and how the structure of outreach activities impact underrepresented students' interest and belonging in engineering.
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0628-0501
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
[biography]
Jessica A. Krogstad is an assistant professor in the Department of Material Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She received her PhD in Materials at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2012. Between 2012 and 2014, she held a postdoctoral appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Her current research explores the interplay between phase or morphological evolution and material functionality in structural materials under extreme conditions. She also maintains interest in engineering education, specifically in outreach and design thinking.
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