Recruitment and retention: Summer transportation institute for secondary school students

Abstract

Devising techniques to recruit, retain, educate and graduate students in not widely known disciplines that demand continuous supplies of workforce has become essential for academic institutions. Recruitment and retention always call for novel approaches that are specific to target audiences and that fit for the host institution. In this aspect, engineering program recruiters reach out to potential candidates, ahead of time, for their respective programs with the support of industry partners who show willingness to fund recruitment programs for their future workforce. Summer Transportation Institute (STI) at the authors' institution is such a program which has been conducted for the past 18 years to create awareness and interest among secondary school students about the transportation industry with support of Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT). This four week residential program that is designed with the introductory technical coursework, laboratory experiments, hands on activities, field trips and training in communication skills. In addition to the instructional activities, the financial support is also used for the food, accommodation and after class activities for the student participants and also for their mentors, who are undergraduate counselors. The program curriculum introduces the topics of transportation in land, water, air, space travel, renewable energy in transportation, pollution due to transportation and applications of geospatial technologies in transportation. In addition, considerable time is also allocated for developing communication skills. The students in groups of five to six people are expected to present their experiences in one of these topics at the end of the program in an award ceremony attended by their parents|guardians, faculty and the program sponsors. As a bridge between the basic mathematics and science and applied engineering, engineering physics plays a vital role in the instructions of this institute. The physics topics that are touched and explored include forces on trusses, physics of flotation and motion of floating objects, theories of flight and physics of energy. The instructions are followed with hands on activities or field trips that can enhance the student experiences. Every year, while this institute helps to recruit 1-2 students from the pool of 25-30 participants for the engineering and science programs, it also helps to support the few undergraduate students as mentoring counselors in summer as a form of retention. The impact of instructing engineering physics at early stages on performance in the college is strong and could be systematized with expanding such instruction to include additional engineering physics.