Exploring STEM Career Options through Collaborative High School Seminars

Abstract The K‐12 Engineering Education Programs (KEEP) Seminar Series for high school juniors and seniors began in 2003 as a collaborative program sponsored by the College of Education, College of Engineering, and the Raggio Research Center for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education at the University of Nevada, Reno. It ran for five years and attracted 130 students to weekly sessions for eight weeks each year where they engaged with presenters from the STEM fields. The goal was to provide students with opportunities to observe research presentations by scientists and engineers in a wide array of specialties in order to understand how the STEM disciplines are integrated and to understand the possibilities for their future career paths. A descriptive study found that females were more stable in their career choices over the eight‐week seminar series, and seniors were better able to learn new STEM content and make connections between high school courses and the seminar presentations than were juniors.