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An education/business partnership: ASU's minority engineering program and the tempe chamber of commerce

Abstract:

For the past five years, the Minority Engineering Program (MEP) in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Arizona State University (ASU) has directed the MEP Summer Bridge Program (SBP) which targets entering underrepresented minority freshman students, who are considering or have declared engineering as their major. This highly successful program has an outstanding record of recruiting and retaining engineering students to the College. The primary purpose of the two-week residential scholarship program is to encourage the students to pursue engineering, computer science, or construction and to prepare them for the academic demands of these majors. Each year the program inćludes a team project. During the 2000 SBP, the MEP collaborated with the Tempe Chamber of Commerce (TCC) to provide the SBP participants with real engineering experience even before they began their freshman classes. These SBP participants, in teams of four students each, designed a web-based version of the TCC newsletter "The Business Advocate." This MEP/TCC partnership benefited both groups, surpassed all expectations, and has resulted in a model that both the MEP and TCC want to continue and to expand in future programs. The students had an increased sense of confidence going into the challenging first year of the engineering curriculum, as well as real-world project experience.