Outreach at Scale: Developing a Logic Model to Explore the Organizational Components of the Summer Engineering Experience for Kids Program - key findings and logic model for SEEK

Oct 15, 2026

The paper addresses persistent underrepresentation of racial and ethnic minorities in engineering and STEM fields by examining large-scale community outreach. It presents a logic model describing resources and organizational components needed to execute NSBE’s Summer Engineering Experience for Kids (SEEK) program as it scales to multiple U.S. cities. Using SEEK as an instrumental case, the study highlights elements to preserve during expansion into underserved communities and emphasizes assessment planning, youth recruitment and engagement strategies, and collective impact approaches for replicating program designs.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages28

Reading Time1 h 11 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Broadening participation challenge

Role of community-based STEM outreach

Challenges to scaling outreach programs

Our Case: NSBE’s Summer Engineering Experiences for Kids

| | Ad | vances in Engineering Edu | cation | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | SPRING 2021 VOLUME 9 NUMBER 2 Outreach at Scale: Developing a Logic Model to Explore the Organizational Components of the Summer Engineering Experience for Kids Program CHERIE D. EDWARDS Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine Richmond, Virginia WALTER C. LEE Virginia Tech Blacksburg, Virginia DAVID B. KNIGHT Virginia Tech Blacksburg, Virginia TRINA FLETCHER Florida International University Miami, Florida KARL REID National Society of Black Engineers Alexandria, Virginia RACHEIDA LEWIS University of Georgia Athens, Georgia ABSTRACT Striving to remain a global leader in innovation, the United States continues prioritizing broadening participation in engineering and other STEM fields. For this reason, STEM outreach programs are increasingly popular and vital. However, few programs offer such outreach experiences at a large, national scale and intentionally situate those experiences in locations that enable access for African American youth. In this paper, we present a logic model that showcases the resources and components that can expand the reach of an effective program, outlining the programmatic components involved in executing the National Society of Black Engineers’ Summer Engineering Experience for Kids (SEEK) program, which has effectively scaled to cities across the United States. Using SEEK as an instrumental case, we highlight what goes into offering a large-scale community-based STEM outreach program, emphasizing aspects that are most important to SPRING 2021 VOLUME 9 NUMBER 2 1 ADVANCES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION Outreach at Scale: Developing a Logic Model to Explore the Organizational Components of the Summer Engineering Experience for Kids Program preserve during expansion into underserved communities. Key findings illustrate that maximizing the potential of recruiting and engaging youth from underserved populations may hinge on the ability of established programs to scale up their initiatives while establishing appropriate assessment plans to measure effectiveness. Additionally, embracing the ideals of collective impact provides an opportunity for such programs to progress their initiatives by replicating program designs in more communities. Key words: broadening participation, informal learning, organizational assessment INTRODUCTION The challenge of broadening participation in engineering and other STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields is illustrated by the low number of people from ethnic and racial minority groups in the STEM workforce. Despite an increase in the number of Black/African Americans and Hispanics/Latinos entering STEM disciplines and jobs since 1995, when compared to the U. S. population demographics, their representation remains relatively low (Palmer, Maramba and Dancy 2011, 493) . More specifically, underserved minorities make up 29% of the U. S. population yet comprise only 9% of science and engineering fields (Committee on Underrepresented Groups and The Expansion of the Science and Engineering Workforce Pipeline 2011, 2) . Persistent underrepresentation can partially be attributed to historically imbalanced educational opportunities (Long III and Mejia 2016, 211-212) . Although some policies and practices that contributed to these imbalances have been or are slowly being altered or removed, addressing education disparities remains a challenge. To mitigate these challenges, the engineering education community often leverages targeted approaches focused on underserved youth populations, or communitybased outreach programs. The objective of such programs is to redress specific barriers to access for a specific population (Edwards et al. 2018, 2-3), addressing disparities in STEM engagement by providing experiences that ideally pique the interest of students from underserved populations and

FAQs

What problem does the paper focus on?

It focuses on the low representation of racial and ethnic minority groups in the STEM workforce and the education disparities that contribute to this underrepresentation.

What framework does the paper present?

It presents a logic model that identifies the resources and organizational components required to scale NSBE’s Summer Engineering Experience for Kids (SEEK) program.

How does the paper evaluate what to preserve during expansion?

It highlights aspects that should be preserved when expanding the program into underserved communities and stresses recruiting and engaging youth from underserved populations along with appropriate assessment plans.

Oct 15, 2026

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