Engineering Ambassadors

Building a Sustainable Hub for the Engineering Ambassadors Network through Industry–Academia Partnerships

Vision: The Engineering Ambassadors Network is an alliance of universities that aims to educate a cohort of diverse and technically skilled engineering undergraduates on how to excite K-12 students about engineering. Visit the following Engineering Ambassador sites:

To solve challenges in energy, environment, health, and society, a wide variety of solutions are needed that can be realized only by a diverse group of engineers who have both a strong technical background and the ability to communicate their work to varied audiences. The vision of the Engineering Ambassadors Network is to attain such a diverse group of engineers by overcoming two barriers. First, many K-12 schoolteachers and guidance counselors lack knowledge about the career opportunities that a STEM degree offers, resulting in qualified students not considering STEM as an academic or professional path. Many of these qualified students are women, individuals of color, or first-generation college students. As a second barrier, numerous studies have indicated that although STEM employers have for years ranked strong communication skills as critical, many STEM graduates still are not prepared to communicate their work [1] or lead multi-disciplinary teams.

To overcome both of these barriers, the Network emphasizes placing the right messenger (a diverse cohort of engineering undergraduates with advanced presentation skills) with the right messages (NAE Changing the Conversation messages [1] such as “engineering is essential to our health, happiness, and safety”) in front of K-12 classes.

Origins of the Engineering Ambassador Network. The Engineering Ambassador Network started at Penn State in the Spring of 2009 with the original goal to encourage women to pursue engineering fields [1]. In this first year, the program consisted of twelve female ambassadors who traveled to local high schools giving engineering presentations that communicate three core messages of Changing the Conversation [1]. Those messages are (1) “engineering makes a world of difference,” (2) “engineering encourages creativity,” and (3) “engineering is essential to our health, happiness, and safety.” During that first year, Al Brockett, who was a Pratt & Whitney vice-president, was so impressed by the communication skills and confidence of these ambassadors that he persuaded United Technologies Corporation (now known as Raytheon Technologies Corporation) not only to sponsor the Engineering Ambassador program but also to disseminate it to three other engineering colleges where United Technologies recruited: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, University of Connecticut, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute [2]. These schools, including Penn State, became the core schools of the Engineering Ambassador Network. In this creation of the Network, the mission grew from recruiting talented women to encouraging all talented students, especially those from underrepresented groups, to pursue careers in engineering [4].

Following Pratt and Whitney’s sponsorship of the network, other schools expressed interest in starting their own Engineering Ambassador programs and becoming a part of the Engineering Ambassador Network. To support this effort, Penn State secured a grant from the National Science Foundation for a national training conference in 2012. The workshop focused on both training Engineering Ambassadors on presentation techniques and instructing administrators from other schools on how to start their own EA programs. This workshop marked the spread of the Engineering Ambassador Network to universities across the United States.

Current Engineering Ambassador Network. Today, the Engineering Ambassadors Network (EAN) continues its focus on spreading messages of Changing the Conversation to K-12 students in order to recruit talented and diverse students into engineering. To help achieve this goal, the Engineering Ambassadors are themselves diverse. For instance, well more than half of the ambassadors are women. Shown in Table 1 are the numbers of ambassadors, the percentage of underrepresented groups represented by these ambassadors, and the numbers of K-12 students reached by the Engineering Ambassadors. Highlighted in gray are the years that EAN had support from the National Science Foundation, which coincides with higher impacts than those years in which there was no support beyond that offered by United Technologies. The blanks in numbers reflect that during times of no funding, it was difficult to gather annual statistics. Still, in 2020, five core Network schools (those four mentioned earlier plus University of Nebraska) reached more than 27,000 K-12 students. University of Nebraska is classified as a core school because they have had a sustained program for the past five years including formal training each year and strong support from the institution.

Table 1. Outreach Statistics for EAN: 2013 – 2020

Currently, eighteen schools with Engineering Ambassador Programs are active within the Engineering Ambassador Network. Many of these schools are in the Northeast, but as seen in Figure 1, programs exist in the west, Puerto Rico, and even Norway. As shown in Figure 2, these schools are categorized into three tiers as seen in Figure 2: tier 1 (red) are RTX funded schools that regularly attend EAN conferences; tier 2 (green) are schools that have been attendees in recent EAN conferences; and tier 3 (blue) are schools that attended early EAN training conferences, but have not attended training conferences in the past two years. Noted in the green tier are five new schools who are attending the EAN’s first virtual training this November.

What distinguishes the EAN from other outreach programs is the focus on developing presentation and leadership skills of the ambassadors. The EAN teaches advanced presentation techniques, such as the assertion-evidence approach, that empower ambassadors not only to make outstanding outreach presentations for their Engineering Ambassador visits to schools but also to create outstanding engineering presentations for their technical courses, internships, and careers.

The visits to the K-12 schools have significant effects on the K-12 students. As Emily, an 8th grader wrote, “I learned that engineers are more than just people who build—they’re problem-solvers, creators, and have one of the most important roles in society.” Equally important, the program has had an even deeper effect on the ambassadors themselves. As Braden (class of 2015) wrote, “Being a part of the Engineering Ambassadors has accelerated the beginning of my career. I’m able to communicate more effectively, contribute to the business more quickly, and challenge the status quo.”

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Engineering Ambassadors Network not only had to embrace virtual presentations to K-12 schools but also had to adopt online training for the next cohort of ambassadors. In September of 2020, the EAN trained 112 new Engineering Ambassadors online. Assisting in this training were 59 senior ambassadors from Penn State, RPI, University of Connecticut, University of Nebraska, and WPI [5]. Although the online training session spanned only fifteen hours, those fifteen hours were spread out over nine days. The trainees also spent additional time outside of the online meetings working on their outreach presentations. On the last day of the online training sessions, the new ambassadors gave their final presentations, and the consensus was that this set of presentations was as strong as the presentations given in past in-person conferences.

The annual National Conference is a signature event of the EAN because it brings together the new Engineering Ambassador cohorts each year. Figure 3 shows attendees of the conference for four different years. All those in attendance received professional training not only on outreach but also on presentation and video-making skills. In addition, two other important topics regularly discussed are (1) social justice and (2) diversity and inclusion. Both of these topics will continue to be important in developing the Ambassadors into future leaders. This program has received numerous recognitions including the ASME Johnson and Johnson Medal [5].