Engineering and elementary school partnershhs (or Dean Kamen's challenge revisited)

1 Bogdan Adamczyk, Seymour and Esther Padnos School of Engineering, Grand Valley State University, adamczyb@gvsu.edu 2 Shirley Fleischmann, Seymour and Esther Padnos School of Engineering, Grand Valley State University, fleischs@gvsu.edu Abstract What can engineering students and faculty offer to inner city fifth and sixth graders and their teachers – and vice versa, what could be the benefit to engineering departments? In this paper we will describe a successful partnership that is now in its third year. The elementary students are from an inner city neighborhood where the high school dropout rate is high – about 30%. Using the projects that have been developed as a context, we will describe the history of the partnership, the benefits to all parties involved, and some of the surprises that were encountered. We will also address how this partnership seems to be another answer to the challenge presented to engineering educators by Dean Kamen at the 2001 ASEE Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. That challenge was and still is to draw promising students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds into engineering and technically based careers.