THE ROLE OF SERVICE-LEARNING: IMPROVING ENGINEERING EDUCATION; ATTRACTING WOMEN INTO ENGINEERING

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Instructional strategies that use holistic, real-world applications of science and technology tend to be more effective for attracting and retaining the interest of women and underrepresented minorities. This proposal focuses on service-learning, a pedagogy which combines active citizenship with student learning. A major component of service learning is that it serves to enhance the academic curriculum as an integrated feature. At the same time, the service projects meet genuine needs of the communities in which and with whom they take place. This project will examine the outcome that participation in service-learning in schools of engineering better attracts and retains women engineers. Along with traditional assessment of success such as course grades or graduation rates, this research will measure participants' perceptions of self-efficacy, their perceptions of the nature of engineering, and their understanding of fundamental engineering concepts. The overall goals of this proposal are to measure the effectiveness of service-learning programs as pedagogical methods for teaching engineering and to examine how service-learning programs attract a more diverse set of engineering students than is currently represented in the population of engineering students. The study of three well-established service learning programs at Tufts and Purdue will use established methods to test self-efficacy and understanding of the nature of engineering and will also develop new instruments to evaluate student understanding of the concepts of engineering design.The results of this research could have significant impact on the number and diversity of engineering graduates and on their ability to effectively address real-world problems. If service learning is shown to provide a more holistic understanding of engineering and its role in society for all students, then implementation of service learning programs will enhance the general workforce by recruiting and graduating more diverse and more competent students to meet the needs of the future.