Dissemination

Annual Reports

2008 Program(PDF)
- Evaluation Addendum (PDF)
2007 Program (PDF),
- Evaluation Addendum (PDF)
2006 Program (PDF),
- Evaluation Addendum (PDF)
2005 Program (PDF),
- Evaluation Addendum (PDF)
2004 Program (PDF),
- Evaluation Addendum (PDF)
2003 Program (PDF)
2002 Program (PDF)
2001 Program (PDF)

Publications

J. Hubelbank, C. Demetry, M.E. Nicholson, S. Blaisdell, P. Quinn, E. Rosenthal, and S. Sontgerath, "Long Term Effects of a Middle School Engineering Outreach Program for Girls: A Controlled Study," presented and in Proceedings, American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exhibition, Honolulu, HI, June 24-27, 2007.
D. Nicoletti, "An Analysis of the Effectiveness of the Admissions Policy for an Outreach Program for Girls in Engineering," Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, vol.8, pp. 221-234, 2002.
D. Nicoletti, J.D. Petrucelli, and J. Russell, "Monitoring Long Term Effects of an Outreach Program for Girls," Proceedings, Frontiers in Education Conference, November 6-9, 2002, Boston, MA.
C. Demetry, D. Nicoletti, K. Mix, K. O'Connor, and A. Martin, "'Who Dunnit?': Learning Chemistry and Critical Thinking through Hands-on Forensic Science," Forensic Science Column (L.H. Berka, Editor), New England Associate of Chemistry Teachers (NEACT) Journal, vol.20, no.2, pp. 19-25, Winter-Spring, 2002.
A.H. Hoffman, H.K. Ault, C. Demetry, and D. Nicoletti, "Teaching Disability Awareness and Universal Design to Middle School Students," pp. 10-12 in Proceedings of the Designing for the 21st Century Conference, June 15-17, 2000.
C. Demetry and D.W. Nicoletti, "Camp REACH: An Engineering Summer Camp for Middle School Girls," Frontiers in Education, Pittsburgh, PA, 1997.

Longitudinal Study Results

Supporting Young Women to Enter Engineering: Long-Term Effects of an Engineering Outreach Program for Middle School Girls A presentation of the results of a six year longitudinal study. Presenter: Dr. Chrys Demetry.

View a recording of this presentation

Information for Planners of Other Outreach Programs

The intended audience for this material is planners of other engineering, math, and science middle school outreach programs who would like to duplicate or adapt some of our activities. We hope to build this part of the site more in the future; currently we focus on providing information about the planning and implementation of the community-oriented design projects, which are a keystone of the program. We have tried to include enough information here to give you a flavor of the activities and a sense of how you could use them in your program. For detailed information or to give us feedback, please contact Prof. Chrys Demetry, Camp Reach Co-Director by e-mail cdemetry@wpi.edu or by phone at +1-508-831-5195.

Community Service Design Projects

Goals, Project Topics, Staff Supervision, Task Sequence and Exercises

Discovery Workshops

Community Service Design Projects

Goals for the Design Projects:

Have girls succeed in solving an open-ended problem by applying a structured design process that engineers typically use.
Introduce the nature of engineering as a collaborative problem solving process with a "care perspective" in which technology is used to help people.
Develop organization and planning skills.
Provide a vehicle for demonstrating the power of teamwork and creativity.
Assist girls in developing oral presentations skills.

Please note: Some aspects of our design projects were modeled after
Dartmouth College's Project for Teaching Engineering Problem Solving.

Design Project Topics for REACH '97:

Redesign a supplies storage room for Edward Street Day Care Center
Design a library area and borrowing program for parents of premature infants at Memorial Hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)
Design a toy storage unit for the play area of the University of Massachusetts Medical Center Pediatrics Clinic

United Way agencies can be good sources for project topics!

Examples of Other Possible Projects*:

Plan a short nature walk in a park
Design a play area for children in a homeless shelter
Design a recycling plan for a non-profit organization or small business
Improving some aspect of patient services in a hospital

*Project topics related to children seem to be particularly appropriate for middle school girls.

Staff Supervision:

The thirty participants in Camp REACH were divided into three groups of ten, each of which was supervised by a middle school math or science teacher and assisted by two high school students (CITs). Thus, there was a 3:1 student:staff ratio, which we feel is important to provide sufficient support for these projects. Each of the three teams worked on a different project in the Worcester area.

Design Project Task Sequence and Exercises:

PLEASE NOTE: For every task that is marked with asterisks (*) below, we developed some worksheets to guide the girls' activities. You are welcome to use them or adapt them for your own purposes. Just send us email, and we will send you hard copies via U.S. Mail.

WEEK 1

Day 1: (1 hr)

*Ice Cream Sundae Social*
Girls create "specs" for their own sundae and then give them to another camper to make.

Day 2: Introduction to Design and Problem Solving (3 hrs with break)

Girls find their teams using "jigsaw puzzle" approach. To form teams, we used information on experience with computers and comfort with oral presentation skills from self-evaluations campers returned with applications.
Team building exercise
*TEAMWORK. What makes a good team?*
- General discussion on what's challenging about working in a team (PROBLEM DEFINITION)
- Provide rules for BRAINSTORMING (IDEA GENERATION)
- Brainstorm rules for good teams. Teachers moderate.
- Each team agrees on its own rules
*DESIGN A BIRTHDAY PARTY*
- Teams are provided with requirements for the party (specifications and constraints) such as suitability for # of people and range in ages of guests, keeping cost low, providing a meal and a fun activity, etc.
- Teams come up with alternative solutions.
- *DECISION MATRIX*
  Each alternative solution is rated for each requirement using a (+= 1 pt) (o= 0 pt) (-= -1 pt) scale, and points are totaled up.
- *PLANNING/SCHEDULING SKILLS*
  Teams generate a task chart for the days preceding the birthday party.

REMINDER: For every task that is marked with asterisks (*), we developed some worksheets to guide the girls' activities. You are welcome to use them or adapt them for your own purposes. Just send us e-mail, and we will send you hard copies via U.S. Mail.

Day 3: Introduction to Design Projects (3 1/2 hrs with break)

Describe projects
Trips to customer sites
Back on campus, teams write *PROBLEM STATEMENTS*
*ROLES* explained and assigned. One pair of girls on each team was assigned a role from among the following five:
- Structural Engineers
- Architectural Engineers
- Project Engineers
- Budget Managers
- Schedule Managers
*ROLE PLAYING SKITS* were used to help girls understand their responsibilities.

Day 4: Information Gathering (4 hrs with break)

Generate list of questions. Divide information gathering tasks according to roles where possible.
*INTERVIEWING SKILLS AND PHONE MAIL/ EMAIL ETIQUETTE*
Need to emphasize that it's different than talking to friends on the phone!
On-campus *INFORMATION GATHERING*
An official file box of resources was available for teams. Included were supply catalogs and contact information for "experts" with whom they could choose to consult. For example, the list included one of our librarians, the supplies/recycling coordinator in Worcester Public Schools, the office property manager at WPI, and some carpenters.

Day 5: Information Gathering (cont'd) (3 hrs with break)

Off-campus information gathering (trips back to sites)
*DEFINE SPECIFICATIONS* for the design. (What criteria will be used to evaluate alternative solutions?)
*BRAINSTORM alternative solutions*

Day 6: (4 hrs with break)

Evaluate alternative solutions using *DECISION MATRIX*
*ORAL PRESENTATION/ PUBLIC SPEAKING SKILLS WORKSHOP*
- Provide overview of how to plan structure a presentation, use of visual aids, practicing delivery, dealing with nervousness.
- Have pairs of girls within teams plan and deliver a very short presentation to her team, related to the design project. Examples: 1) problem definition; 2) information gathering; 3) design requirements/specifications; 4) brainstorming process and results; 5) decision matrix. Give each pair one transparency to make a visual aid. These presentations were used as starting point for upcoming interim presentation to customer.
- Prepare materials for Monday presentation. Select 2-3 girls to make the presentation. Decide other supporting roles (i.e. some to take notes about questions, customer feedback).

WEEK 2

Day 1: (1 hr in evening)

Practice interim presentation

Day 2: (4 hrs with break)

Interim presentations to customers
Debrief back at WPI: Evaluate customer input
Go through problem solving cycle again considering customer input. It may be necessary to do slight problem redefinition, do some additional brainstorming, modify design, etc.
Change/ reassign roles for remainder of week

Day 3: (3 hrs with break)

Complete final design.
Different role pairs work on different deliverables, such as:
- "Parts" list for design
- Approximate budget, as accurate as possible
- Sketches/schematics of design. Information was provided on how to make *DRAWING PLANS* (scaling measurements, different views, etc.)
- Schedule for ordering materials and building the actual product.
- Prototype/model using foam board

Day 4: (1 hr)

Review guidelines for how to write a report.

Day 5: (3 hrs with break)

Sub-groups working on:
- Written reports
- Final oral presentation
- Prototype/model

Day 6: (3 hrs with break)

Continue work on written and oral reports, prototypes/models.
Prepare oral presentation materials.
Practice oral presentation. All girls participated in final presentations. No questions from audience in order to keep time and anxiety levels down.

Day 7: FINAL PRESENTATIONS

Final presentations to parents and customers at WPI

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Last modified: September 30, 2009 11:47:23