Incorporating industrial co-op experience in high school classroom outreach

This paper describes high school STEM lessons created by three undergraduate mentors. The mentors participated in a classroom outreach program called Computer Science Investigations (CSI: Cincinnati) as part of the Mentoring for Connections to Computing effort funded by the National Science Foundation's Broadening Participation in Computing program. The CSI program performs pre-college outreach with a team of undergraduates in computing-related majors who deliver an original lesson with hands-on activities and interact with high school students in their classroom. The mentors leverage their industrial and academic experiences to create the lessons and act as role models for college and professional success. The evaluation of the CSI activities includes pre- and post-surveys of the high school students' interest in computing as well as reflections from the mentors' journals.

Introduction

The Computer Science Investigations (CSI: Cincinnati) project brings undergraduates in computing-related fields into urban STEM classrooms to interact with and teach high school students. CSI: Cincinnati is funded under the National Science Foundation's Broadening Participation in Computing program and its goals include: (1) introducing underrepresented populations of high school students to computing topics, field of study, and the profession in a fun but challenging way, and (2) training computing undergraduates to mentor youth and teach computing topics.