An Index to Aid in the Development of High School Recruitment of Future Engineering and Science Majors

We propose an index to aid institutions of higher education to better target professional development programs for high school teachers and recruitment of students. In particular, we propose an index, f, of an institution of higher education, defined as the number of feeder high schools who have graduates enrolling in the institution >= f, as a useful indicator for the selection of high schools with whom an institution should work in the areas of professional development and recruitment of students. Using this f-index for the College of Engineering and Science at Louisiana Tech University, we have been able to show how professional development programs with regional high schools have positively impacted student enrollment in our engineering and science degree programs.