Rick McMaster
June 10, 2002

Introduction
National Engineers Week in the Central Texas Area continued to grow in 2002 as a community effort. This report focuses on Discover “E”, the effort to reach children in the classrooms or other venues, encouraging them to study mathematics and science through hands-on experiences lead by engineers, scientists, programmers and other interested volunteers. (The University of Texas, especially the Student Engineering Council, has a number of complementary activities for National Engineers Week. These are not addressed by this report.)

National Chairs
The co-chairs for 2002 at the national level were the DuPont Corporation and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). DuPont does not have a local presence in Central Texas and there was no coordination effort required. The Austin chapter of ASCE provided 22 speakers representing 14 Austin businesses. The chapter president, Don Willhouse, who is also on our local steering committee, solicited the local honorary chairperson who provided the impetus for the Lower Colorado River Authority engineers to join the effort. These efforts accounted for ten percent of the total volunteer support and the growth in the current year’s volunteer pool.

Local Organization
The overall effort is coordinated through a volunteer steering committee with representatives from local businesses, representatives from school districts, professional societies, and the University of Texas. The effort was co-chaired this year by Greg Ledenbach (Intel emeritus) and Rick McMaster (IBM). Joe Beal, P.E., General Manager, Lower Colorado River Authority, served as our local honorary chairperson.

Because of the large number of schools and volunteers, the steering committee does not schedule the school visits directly. Instead, volunteers who are willing to assume additional responsibilities are identified as team leaders. These team leaders make, or are provided with, the contacts at the schools interested in participating in the program. They form their teams from volunteers who have signed up through the local website or with their colleagues. They work with educators to schedule visits and determine the best format and content for the classroom. Finally, they provide a summary of their visit and recommendations for changes to the process to the steering committee.

Team Leader Resources
A number of resources to aid the team leaders are provided. Planning Kits, videos, brochures, bi-lingual bookmarks, and this year ZOOM™ into Engineering kits were obtained from National Engineers Week headquarters and provided to the teams. Two documents were published locally, the Team Leader’s Handbook, edited by Amy Mills (Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce) and the Resource Handbook, edited by Dr. Ron Bell (UT and MOVES) to complement the national materials. The resource handbook is a compilation of activities that have been used in the past. These activities come from a number of sources including the National Engineers Week Planning Kits, IBM, Intel, and MOVES. A number of firms also provided materials to use as “giveaways” for the school visits.

A meeting was held on January 26th to provide these materials to the Team Leaders and give them their school assignments and general guidance as well as providing them with a opportunity to network with others on their experiences as team leaders.

Training sessions on the ZOOM™ into Engineering activities for the elementary school visits were held throughout the community through the efforts of Ron Bell, Brenda Luderman (Intel), Danielle Seabold (UT), and Ed Seymour (IBM). Training sessions on other activities for middle and high schools were held to complement the ZOOM™ sessions.

Team selection continued to evolve this year with the introduction of two additional ways in which team leaders could build their teams. First, the list of volunteers not yet on a team, with their contact information, was distributed periodically to the team leaders as a resource in assembling their team. Second, a list of upcoming school visits with detailed information from the team leaders was sent to all the volunteers to allow them to choose specific schools to visit and contact the team leader directly.

Website
The local website, www.centexeweek.org , continued to expand under Leslie McMaster’s design and development . It provides basic information on the program to anyone who is interested, additional resources for the team leaders and volunteers through activities and links to other sites, on-line sign-up for both schools and volunteers and a view of the local activities as we progress through the school visits, January through May.

Community Communications
The “Key Contacts Meeting” was hosted by 3M on October 24th, 2001, as our local kick-off and call for volunteers. Representatives of both businesses and the local school districts attended. They saw an historical overview of Discover “E” and the plans for 2002 as well as hearing directly from volunteers, educators and students.

Mayor Gus Garcia’s presentation of a City Council Proclamation for National Engineers Week was televised locally and both the television and newspaper media covered a number of school visits.

Volunteer Population
The number of volunteers in 2002 was up from 2001 with almost 600 volunteers compared to 550 in 2001. Independent Sector, a coalition of non-profits, foundations and corporations valued volunteer time at $16.05 per hour in February 2002. Using this rate, the total value of the time our volunteers gave to the community is over $65,000.

The number of firms and societies represented by these volunteers was up slightly to 52 from 50. The table below represents the distribution for populations of ten or greater. (Final reports were not received from all teams so the numbers below may be slightly low.)

Gender was an optional field for those who signed up via our local web site. Of the overall population approximately 39% were female and 61% male.

Ethnicity was also optional. Sixteen volunteers identified themselves as African American; twenty, as Asian; and fourteen, as Hispanic. (These numbers are the minimum population represented by the volunteers.)

In addition, we did have specific needs for bilingual speakers at several schools. Twenty-eight volunteers identified themselves as fluent in Spanish.

Schools
This year we placed an emphasis on the elementary schools to fully utilize the ZOOM ™
into Engineering materials. We had 162 schools plus one university that requested visits. One hundred were elementary schools, representing approximately 50% of the elementary schools in the area and an almost 3X growth over 2001. In addition we had 30 middle schools, 27 high schools, and 5 home schools. Much of the increase was due to the efforts of the LCRA engineers who expanded into the rural schools that had not been visited in previous years.

School districts that participated this year are summarized in the following table.

With the program this year we have reached home school groups for the first time.

Visits reported varied from a single classroom to 31 classrooms at a single school as well as several assemblies.

Other Student Contacts
We continued to supply judges to school science fairs - six this year - encouraging students in their study of math and engineering.

We had three site visits reported, two to IBM and one to AMD.

With the assistance of KLRU, we had our first community events. One was held at Highland Mall as part of the KLRU Kid’s Club birthday celebration. The second was co-hosted by The Children’s Courtyard at one of their Austin locations. Both KLRU and the Children’s Courtyard would like to continue this relationship into future National Engineers Week efforts

We participated in two schools’ science night with the ZOOM™ activities.

Data Summary
The following table summarizes the student contact for the 2002 effort.

* This includes an estimate of the number of student reached by teams that did not provide final reports based on 75% of the count provided by similar teams that did provide final reports.

Based on the school visits reported and the available demographics for these schools, the weighted populations that we have reached this year are as follows.

Financials

This year we received grants from 3M, Intel and LCRA totaling $6000. These funded the children’s community events. Since much of our other expenses were covered by local businesses we ended the season with about $3,620 that will be used for Fall 2002 activities and National Engineers Week 2003. Major sponsors included SBC Technology Resources Inc. (t-shirts), IBM (steering committee meetings, team leader luncheon and reproduction costs), 3M (key contacts luncheon), Intel (Slinkeys® and travel expenses for ZOOM™ training), University of Texas, Austin (travel expenses for ZOOM™ training), Science in the Movies (school assembly), MaxNet Enterprises (web site hosting), and Solectron, Texas, (school letter reproduction).

Below is a summary of the expenditures for the 2002 program. This does not include the cost of the “giveaways” provided by businesses or the money spent by volunteers for materials. Some volunteers were able to use supplies left over from the community events.

Quotes
Below are some of the comments received in response to the program this year.

It was a wonderful presentation/experiments. The kids were very excited to see the results. Thank you!

[from a volunteer] By the way, here's my favorite quote, said to me while grocery shopping in my E-week T-shirt..."Hey, are you one of those Zoom engineers?" from a mother who took her two toddlers to one of the community events. It made my day!

… Please – repeat next year.

…The presentation & activity were very engaging. The students were active and exited about what they were doing and learning. I hope to have [volunteer name] back in the future! Thank you!

For the past three years the engineers have been just wonderful. They have brought hand-on activities and the kids had a super experience.

This was terrific. Thanks for taking the time to work with our kids. They learned a LOT.

Come more often! The kids rarely have visitors in their own room w/ hands-on activities. They were very excited. They did not want my help – they wanted the “engineers” to do it.I think this program is a great opportunity for kids to expand their knowledge about their community and learn about the possibility of a future career in engineering. Your volunteers were very informative, lively and full of great examples, suggestions, and enthusiasm. Thanks!

I really enjoyed the presentation and so did the students. I highly encourage a repeat visit every year.

It was great! Thank you!!

Acknowledgements
The success of the program is due to the volunteers and their employers who allow them the time for this community service. Special thanks go to Joe Beal for his outstanding effort as our honorary chair, to Greg Ledenbach as local co-chair and for his work on managing our first community events, and to our steering committee for their enthusiasm, support and ideas.