Expanding the UNIVERSE: UNderstanding Industrial Engineering VERSatility for K-12 Educators

The Industrial Engineering (IE) profession needs more post-secondary students who want to be engineers, who can because they have the knowledge, skills, and messaging necessary to be successful along the way. Per ASEE, in 2021, 23.6% of BS degrees in engineering were awarded to women; at Iowa State University, the percentage of women studying IE ranged from ~30-38% from 2011-2021, leaving a significant, untapped source of potential IEs. While many high school students are dissuaded from pursuing engineering because of insufficient math/science prerequisites, an additional challenge for IE is that students have never heard of the profession. K-12 educators have significant influence on students' career considerations. With NASA funding, this project's first objective is creating and offering a state-approved professional development course for license renewal credit, to be offered the first time in June 2024. In each offering, thirty K-12 educators will experience IE at Iowa State University with hands-on activities, lesson planning with faculty, and interactions with alumni who work at/with NASA and other space-related companies like SpaceX and Collins Aerospace. The second project objective is creating lesson(s), example(s), and messaging about IE to share with K-12 educators. With more K-12 educators who understand, appreciate, and teach students about the importance of IE, we will increase the number of students ready to apply to first-year engineering programs and thus, increase the number of students, including women, pursuing IE careers. This paper shares the fully developed course, K-12 lessons, logistics, and other information for other IE departments to use.