STEM Education for Middle & High School Students: Opening Doors and Minds to Engineering Professions through GEE and TREC

Each summer, the University of Memphis engages, educates, and excites Memphis area students and teachers with two fast-paced interactive programs involving a number of activities designed to motivate and challenge participants to explore engineering.

The Girls Experiencing Engineering Program (GEE) targets middle and high school aged girls. The GEE program increases the number of girls pursuing careers in STEM fields by offering an opportunity to increase awareness and interest in the fields of mathematics, science, and engineering, with a specific focus session for transportation engineering. Click to see participant responses.

The male version of the program is called TRansportation Engineering Careers (TREC). The TREC program increases the number of students pursuing careers in transportation by offering high school students an opportunity to increase awareness and interest levels regarding existing and potential opportunities in the transportation field.

The program also seeks to create a broader impact by providing high school science and math teachers with new pedagogical methods and tools for use in their classrooms.

Program goals are addressed through careful selection of curricular activities, undergraduate student mentors, and professional speakers. Speakers are selected to include diversity in gender, ethnicity, career path, and experience. Content areas covered demonstrate the wide variety of opportunities available through transportation engineering. Students participate in activities in teams of four to emphasize the importance of teamwork and collaboration. Teams earn points based on successful completion of activities, with the winning teams at the end of the week receiving prizes. The competitive environment helps foster active engagement of all students in the program.