Create a STEM Pipeline for Students Who Become Engineering Majors Who Become Engineers

Many STEM initiatives fail because all essential components are not identified. To rectify this, we use a collaborative planning process involving key stakeholders to define, design, align, and deliver all essential components needed to produce intended outcomes. The following are some of these essential components:

Why are these and other mentoring components so essential? They are needed to satisfy all of the recommendations identified by Dubois and colleagues based on their 2011 meta-analysis of research on mentoring youth. The following were their main recommendations:

Dubois et al. (2011) found that many types of mentors were used to mentor youth, most notably teachers, parents, professionals, and retirees. Sometimes these mentors volunteered their time and expertise; sometimes they were paid to do this. But Dubois et al. did not address an essential question: How can a program have quality control over any of these mentors to ensure they fulfill all of these recommendations so that intended outcomes are produced?

Our solution is to use undergrads as mentors and to give them course credit for providing effective mentoring. We’ve found that undergrads will spend more time with proteges than the assignment requires of them as they engage in worthwhile learning activities. Over an 8-year period, more than 300 of the first author’s undergrads earned course credit for providing effective mentoring for more than 1,000 proteges, and none dropped out of university while doing this.

Because the age gap between mentors and proteges is small, proteges can identify with, talk candidly with, and emulate undergrads, who have achieved success dealing with the same challenges proteges are encountering. Undergrads provide the “missing link” in the pipeline between youth and professionals and a bridge that connects youth with professionals who are too busy to be full-time mentors but can plug in to a MAEP when appropriate. Undergrads are trained to use STEM education kits to maximize learning in areas like robotics, electronics, alternative energy, and rocketry. STEM education kits provide a focus for learning 21st-century skills called the 4 Cs: critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity. Mentors are trained to teach proteges how to work on a team, take turns being leader and follower, listen to each other’s ideas and try ideas that seem promising of a problem solution, complete a task they start by solving the problem, and give a presentation in which they describe what they did to solve each problem and what they learned from this.

Proteges learn how to use propositional thinking (e.g., If I do this or that, what will be the consequence?) as they solve problems. This thinking skill enables proteges to make appropriate decisions in their daily interactions with others and to choose decisions that produce positive benefits versus decisions that produce negative outcomes.

Undergrad mentors are trained to use the STEM education kits to help proteges learn about STEM topics (e.g., robotics, electronics, alternative energy). These mentors provide the right combination of didactic instruction (to teach fundamental concepts and demonstrate needed skills and procedures) and open inquiry (to engage students in discovery learning). Undergrads provide both methods for learning because research has found that both are needed to maximize learning for all students (Coleman et al. 1973). This introductory activity prepares proteges to learn how STEM topics are being applied in the real world by professionals, as arranged by the undergrad mentors.

Here is just one example of how undergrad mentors help young proteges connect “learning about” with “learning how”: A small team of proteges wanted to learn about the relationship between architectural design and construction of buildings. Their mentor took them to view and take photos of all the major buildings in Vancouver, Canada, that Arthur Erikson had designed and then helped the proteges formulate good questions to ask him, such as “What design and construction problems had to be solved when you decided to let large trees grow through the roof of the underground library at the University of British Columbia?” “What challenges had to be resolved when you designed Simon Fraser University as a single construction to sit on top of Burnaby Mountain?”

This involvement of youth + undergrads + professionals is important because it enables young proteges to overcome their fear of science and math courses, on one hand, while exposing them to the possibilities and realities of STEM careers, on the other. Young proteges easily identify with undergrads, and they learn about best-fit careers from busy professionals so they can pursue the right career for them.

In a 1982 study, Gray found that 29 of 31 proteges in Grades 5 and 6 said their mentor-assisted enrichment project must be completed for them to view it as worthwhile ($p<0.0000$). This motivation to complete projects was enabled by an agreed-upon mentoring action plan for each MAEP, which was created and completed by mentors and proteges, so that proteges knew from the outset what was expected:

A key to success is training undergrad mentors how to solicit input from proteges so they perceive the overall project as “theirs,” even though it is based on each mentor’s expertise. When activities take place on campus, this exposes youth to professors and facilities they did not know about before, enticing them to consider enrolling at these institutions. When activities take place where professionals work, this exposes proteges and mentors to real-world applications and to potential employers looking for new hires, who know how to work together on teams that produce desired outcomes.

Perhaps you’ve been wondering whether young proteges can create, carry out, complete, and present an enrichment program on their own after having done this with a mentor’s assistance. The first author wondered the same thing and conducted research to find out; results are presented in Table 1. In a study of preference for “mentor-assisted” and “self-directed” enrichment projects involving 31 proteges in Grades 5 and 6 (Gray 1982), a survey and follow-up interviews revealed that the students had no inherent bias for doing either type of enrichment project before beginning the program (see Question 1), and many said they wanted to do a “self-directed” project after learning how to do an enrichment project with a mentor (see Question 18). Student protege responses on 15 other questions clearly indicate 15 ways that mentor assistance had a significantly beneficial impact; exceptions were Question 7 (it takes time to do both kinds of enrichment project) and Question 12 (these students were already learning to use higher-level thinking skills in class).

Multiple benefits were produced by properly implemented mentor-assisted enrichment projects. Student proteges in Grades 4–12 benefited in multiple ways, such as the following:

Undergraduate mentors benefitted in multiple ways, such as the following:

Faculty benefit in multiple ways, such as the following:

Proteges’ teachers benefit in multiple ways, such as the following:

Schools and colleges benefit in multiple ways, such as the following:

The outcomes and benefits described in this paper can only be produced intentionally by providing appropriate structures, training, and incentives based on research and development of what works and why. Informal mentoring and partially planned mentoring initiatives cannot produce such success. Only a properly planned and implemented, formalized mentoring program can ensure success because all essential components are defined, designed, aligned, and delivered.