How many times have we heard that a child follows the path of his/her parents? If your parents went to college, chances you will too. If your parents were in the military, chances are you will too. If your parents were engineers or scientists, you will be motivated to pursue that field.
Thus, if the nation wants more youth to go into engineering fields, we need to find ways to increase the connection of people who workin engineering with youth who don't have these models in their family or community.
I lead a non-shool volunteer-based tutor/mentor program strategy in Chicago where volunteers from many business backgrounds connect with our teens as they join us in 7th grade. Our volunteers find us via internet searches or are recruited by their friends. We constantly search for donors to support the infrastructure that makes this possible.
Since 1994 I have been building a database of Chicago non-school tutor/mentor programs that can be searched by age-group and zip code. This is on the internet. If those who want more youth to become engineers would use their advertising, media, web sites and philanthropy to encourage employees to be volunteers, lleaders, tech support and/or donors in these different programs, and to support their on-going and long-term involvement, more kids could be reached and inspired to be engineers, and could be given age appropriate support as they go through school so that they are more likely to do the post high school work that leads them into this industry.
