Marquette's Engineering Student Volunteer Outreach Program to Fifth Graders in the Public Schools, Choice Schools, and a Charter School in Milwaukee

Abstract

ABSTRACTEducational efforts by the MSE profession can effect society in several ways: by producing more and better MSE graduates, by enhancing the Materials backgrounds of students from other engineering disciplines, by continuing education programs, and, in a nontraditional sense, by impacting the non-engineering community with outreach programs. I suggest that the effect on society of working with disadvantaged elementary school children, such as inner city fifth graders, is potentially far greater than efforts spent on non-engineering students already in college, high school students, or even middle school students. The Fifth Grade Volunteer Teaching Program (5GVP) at Marquette has attempted over the last ten years to inform Milwaukee's inner city fifth graders of the existence of an engineering career while showing them that science is something that they can actually do themselves and that the doing is fun. Maybe some of the roughly 5,000 students taught have stayed in the college prep track in math and science as a result of contact with our enthusiastic engineering student volunteers. Our lessons are self contained and heavy with things for the fifth graders to do themselves. One lesson, which portends Materials Science and Engineering, is called, “Phases of Matter”. This year I have expanded the 5GVP Program to include three of the Choice Schools operating in Milwaukee. These schools differ from the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and from each other significantly. Class sizes in the Choice Schools vary from much smaller than MPS to about the same size as MPS. The school buildings range from ramshackle to very modern. The Charter School has science labs and the Choice Schools do not. The Charter School is for profit and these two Choice Schools are not for profit.