Investigation of pre-university pathways into engineering

Significant efforts have been made to increase the number and diversity of students in pathways to engineering careers. This paper describes an effort to address these goals by adapting EPICS, a nationally recognized project-based, service-learning university program, to the high school and middle school environments. Preliminary data from 60 high schools in 11 states with over 2,200 students indicate that this program is having an impact on students' interest in and their views of engineering. However, students' academic and career choices are influenced by a number of factors. Building on previous research investigating pathways into and through engineering, we are beginning a study to explore pre-university students' experiences in our program and how they impact pathways into engineering using a mixed-methods approach grounded in Social Cognitive Career Theory. As an initial step, we have developed a survey, which can be given to students before and after they participate in the program, in order to determine changes in their self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and personal interest. In this work-in-progress paper, we describe the instrument development and data analysis processes. At the conference, we will present preliminary analyses of the pilot tests.