EAGER: Co-Creating a Research Agenda to Evaluate University Ambassador Programs' Impact on Engineering Identity of K-12 Students

多元化的劳动力会带来更具创造性的问题解决方案，也会让社会更加公正。尽管在提高多样性方面已经取得了长足的进步，但工程学仍然以白人和男性为主。大学正试图通过开展工程推广来增加多样性。具体地说，大学生访问幼儿园到12年级的教室，并参与旨在激发学生对工程学兴趣的讨论和活动。然而，还有待观察的是，这些项目是否以及在多大程度上成功地增加了来自传统上代表性较低的人群的学生攻读工程学学位和职业的可能性。该项目寻求将参与工程推广的各种利益攸关方聚集在一起，以便能够制定一个全面的长期研究议程。通过这一议程，研究人员和项目管理人员最终将能够更好地评估和评估项目是否有效地鼓励不同群体追求工程职业，并帮助项目采用更有影响力的方法。研究人员试图了解大使项目对工程途径的长期影响，以及这些项目是否有助于传统上服务不足的学生发展工程身份。有必要进行意向性和纵向研究，以确定大使项目是否具有真正和持久的影响。纵向研究是时间和资源密集型的，而且大使项目之间存在的差异使得小规模研究只能起到很小的作用。工程推广社区往往因其寻求实现的社会变革规模而资金不足，进行深入评估将使资源得到更好的利用。通过研究，可以确定最有效的战略，并将其用于制定更有效的外联方案。创建一个统一的研究议程，让不同的利益相关者参与进来，虽然具有挑战性，但有许多好处，包括：制定供全县项目使用的评估方案；创建K-12和大学人员之间的关系，导致对工程身份的纵向研究；以及为可扩展、有效的项目实施开发模型。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

A diverse workforce leads to more creative problem solving and is more socially just. Though great strides have been made to improve diversity, engineering remains predominantly white and male. Universities are attempting to increase diversity by conducting engineering outreach. Specifically, university students visit kindergarten through 12th grade classrooms and engage in discussions and activities intended to motivate student interest in engineering. However, what remains to be seen is if, and to what extent, these programs successfully increase the likelihood that students from traditionally underrepresented populations are pursuing engineering degrees and careers. This project seeks to bring together a diverse spectrum of stakeholders involved in engineering outreach such that a comprehensive, long-term research agenda can be developed. Through this agenda, researchers and program administrators will ultimately become better able to evaluate and assess whether programs effectively encourage diverse populations to pursue engineering careers, as well as help programs employ approaches that are more impactful.The researchers seek to understand the long-term impact that ambassador programs have on engineering pathways and whether these programs help traditionally underserved students develop engineering identities. There is a need for intentional and longitudinal research to determine whether ambassador programs have real and lasting impact. Longitudinal studies are time and resource intensive and, the variation that exists across ambassador programs make small-scale studies only marginally useful. The engineering outreach community is often underfunded for the scale of social change it seeks to accomplish and conducting deep evaluation will allow for the better use of resources. Through research, the most effective strategies can be pinpointed and used to develop more effective outreach programming. Creating a unified research agenda that a diverse spectrum of stakeholders buy into, while challenging, has numerous benefits including: the development of an evaluation protocol that is used by programs across the county; the creation of relationships between K-12 and university personnel that results in longitudinal studies on engineering identity; and the development of models for scalable, effective program implementation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.