Building industry/education partnerships for tomorrow's workforce - Tech careers: "I am the future"

Abstract

The island of Maui is known the world over as a beautiful vacation destination. It is also home to an emerging High Technology sector. The technology industry in Hawaii has been faced with chronic recruitment and retention challenges due to a local labor force insufficient to meet the growing demand for engineering and technical talent and the expense of recruiting offshore. The Maui Economic Development Board and Women in Technology 1 (WIT) have helped industry to understand that women and other underrepresented minorities are key resources in meeting these challenges. This paper presents survey results and anecdotal evidence from the seven year history of WIT's signature event: Tech Careers "I Am The Future." It explains how this event was revised and improved to become an anchor for STEM career influence and outreach efforts to Maui County high school students and beyond. Hundreds of students and teachers have participated in the program that is now an annual event for the companies in the Maui Research and Technology Park (Park) and the U.S. Air Force. The program model offers students a chance to hear presentations from host companies at the Park. The companies are prepped in advance with hands-on engineering activities to engage the students. Students then hear from a panel of diverse young technology professionals who graduated from local high schools on the subject of "How I Got My Start." The final activity is a visit to the normally inaccessible observatories at the Maui Space Surveillance Complex, ten thousand feet above sea level atop Mount Haleakala. In its first year, Tech Careers employed a passive recruitment process to enroll interested students. Sixty-six percent of participants were male, and most came from private schools or those in wealthier districts. Anecdotally, they were also primarily Caucasian. In subsequent years, gender equity recruitment protocols were implemented and refined so that now the participant population appropriately reflects the gender, socio-economic and ethnic diversity of the community from which they are drawn. In addition, efforts are undertaken to involve younger students in the hopes of having an earlier impact on career choice. This paper discusses the collaboration between industry and educators, provides suggestions for starting industry-based career outreach programs, and offers strategies for attracting girls and underrepresented students to such a program. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2006.