TAME Days at Universities

A Suggested Program

            When a TAME alliance visits your campus, you can anticipate meeting middle and/or high school students possessed of drive, intelligence, and high aspirations.  They will be accompanied by TAME volunteers, often including teachers, engineers, and parents, who work with the kids on a regular basis in and outside of school.  Here are some suggestions for activities that are useful and interesting to your young visitors.  These activities would easily occupy students from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., including a “working lunch.”  Alternate active and sedentary activities.  Incorporate special aspects of your university that aren’t included here.  Most of all, enjoy the kids, show off your campus—and thanks for hosting the engineers and scientists of the future!

MEET THE DEAN (OR CHAIR) (5-10 minutes)

            A short welcome by a college official lets the students know your school is interested in enticing them to your campus as freshmen.  This is a good time to quote a few statistics—how many students are admitted into engineering programs each year and their average SAT scores, for example—that will help clarify the college’s admission practices and assist students in setting goals.

TOUR THE CAMPUS (45-60 minutes)

            In our experience, students who haven’t visited many colleges always want to know one thing:  where do they eat?  A campus tour will certainly include the landmark buildings, founder’s statue, and memorial fountain but should always recognize that kids want to get a handle on the student lifestyle.  So include the union or recreation building, the football field, a model dorm room and the cafeteria, along with major buildings and libraries. 

If you want to give the kids a quick but instructive activity, stop at your largest library and assign them to locate a book by someone who shares their last name.  (Impose a time limit!)  There’s often a huge gap between the high school and public libraries they’re accustomed to and the comprehensive, research-oriented collection of a university.

ADMISSIONS AND FINANCIAL AID (20-30 minute talk plus 30-60 minute activity)

            Have someone from your offices of admissions and financial aid share the reality of the application and selection processes.  A 20-minute presentation can be followed with an activity where students design a first-semester-freshman schedule for themselves using current course catalogs and your able assistance.  This is where the realities of prerequisites, outside reading hours, and rigorous time management come into play.

Financing Your Education is another extremely useful activity. Help students figure out where the money is going to come from—even if they’re in sixth grade, it’s good to have a clue about how much college will really cost, and what parts will come from parents, scholarships, jobs, and loans.

LUNCH WITH STUDENTS (30 minutes)

            Seat an undergrad at each table for grilling by the TAME kids.  If you let the chaperone know ahead of time that this will happen, they can be sure the kids are primed to ask questions.  When prepping your undergrads, encourage them to share information about themselves—where they are from, why they chose your university, how they selected their major, the best and worst of going to college, and so forth.  Holding lunch to half an hour will help keep students focused.

VISIT CLASSES (30 minutes, with travel time)

            A brief visit (10-15 minutes) to an engineering, math, or science class gives students a look at a college classroom and how learning takes place in the university environment.  Many professors are amenable to this if approached ahead of time and will actually integrate the kids into a short activity or discussion, even when the content is relatively advanced.  It’s a fabulous experience for the kids, who will be able, literally, to picture themselves as students in your school.  Afterward, ask the kids for ways the college class was different from and similar to their classes.

TOUR LABS (flexible duration, depending upon nature of work and # of labs)

            Some research programs are ideal setting for tour groups.  UT Austin, for example, has safely and successfully hosted middle and high school students in chemistry, physics, and engineering labs in the areas of microelectronics (clean room air showers are popular, and scrapped chips make interesting takeaways), robotics (students try their hand at manipulating robotic arms), synthetic chemistry (make nylon), linear dynamics (very cool standing wave demonstrations), surface analysis (scanning electron microscopy of bugs), CAD, and more.  Undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows may be available to do short demos and explain their work.  This is also a great way to have your visitors rub elbows with people who have set very high academic goals—or they wouldn’t be there.

For more information about the Texas Alliance for Minorities in Engineering, please contact the TAME state office at (512)471-6100, or visit our website, www.tame.org.