Here's Evelyn's second draft of the meeting summary

With support from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Undergraduate Education, the Sugar Lake Conference was held July 26-28, 2002, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.* Representatives from K-12, community colleges, universities, and business and industry/professional societies engaged in a discussion of how to improve access to, interest in, and quality of engineering education. Over 80 representatives of these four constituencies, from nine regions (Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Virginia, Alabama, Washington, North Dakota/Minnesota/Wyoming, California, and New York), attended.

The first significant outcome of the Sugar Lake Conference was development of vision statements and action plans by each regional delegation. Prominent themes in the regional vision statements were a focus on recruitment and retention of underrepresented minorities to engineering education, and the central role to be played by community colleges in defining this focus. The nine regional action plans included specific details of what each delegation would do when they returned to their institutions. All plans were collaborative among the four constituencies, with specific roles and responsibilities laid out in many cases.

The second significant outcome was consensus about what a future national collaboration in engineering education should encompass. Participants decided that a national effort requires at least the following characteristics: convening and sharing of effective practices (workshops, fostering excellence in teaching at all levels, models of articulation, etc.); advocacy (activities that impact national policy); and tracking of engineering pipeline statistics (to longitudinally assess the impact of a national engineering education collaborative).

A significant area of agreement among participants was the need for a national approach to engineering degree transfer among community colleges and universities. Statistically, at least one-third of graduates attend two or more colleges while pursuing their degrees, and at many universities around 40 percent of students in colleges of engineering began their education at community colleges. It seems logical that a national model should exist for seamless transfer of acedemic work. Such a model would facilate transfer and allow easier career track exploration for students nationwide. The conference was consistently positive that ABET would play an expanded role in defining two-year college to university transfer curriculum.

Finally, a word about energy and commitment to action. A feeling of particpation in something very important was evident across all constituency lines. Every region left this conference with an action plan to start immediately. Every region agreed that this was only the beginning of what a true national collaboration should accomplish. That motivation toward action should not end with this one conference. Eighty participants is a small fraction of the potential audience for such a national collaboration. We envision a national dissemination effort that builds a community of engineering practitioners, with all constituents represented as equals.

The engineering community has begun to pay attention to K-12 with such efforts as FIRST Robotics, IEEE-sponsored programs, etc., but very little national focus has been placed on the two-year college’s role in engineering education. It is time community college engineering educators are recognized as critical partners in the building of engineering talent in this country. Students are the focus of what community colleges do&endash;and this focus should drive the future of engineering education.

A new steering committee is forming for this effort, with more balanced representation of women and racial minorities than the previous committee. Discussion is underway for a special publication to act as a national recruiting tool, buttressed by a national webpage to tie together national collaborators in a focussed effort to recruit and retain engineering students.

*Why Grand Rapids, MN? Grand Rapids is home to Itasca Community College, host of the Sugar Lake Conference. ICC is a small, rural, two-year institution that has made remarkable progress in recruiting and retaining engineering students over the past ten years. Itasca’s most recent venture is the securing of $4.6 million in state and private funding to build what is most likely the first dedicated engineering building (Itasca Engineering Center) on a community college campus. The building will not only house state-of-the-art laboratories, but also dormitories for 36 engineering students. See www.engineering.itascacc.net/ for further information about this model engineering program.