At first, underserved students in area schools had a hard time drawing when Jerrod A. Henderson, Ph.D., asked them what an engineer looked like. Now, his research is showing that mentorship really does make a difference.
His students now emphatically say to him again and again: “I look like an engineer!” Henderson actually had to provide more racially-diverse skin-tone crayons to his group of fourth and fifth graders during a “Draw-an-Engineer-Task.” They wanted to draw (e.g. mechanical and chemical) engineers who looked like themselves. Henderson and his research team (Dr. Virginia Rangel and Chelsea Martinez) conduct research in engineering identity. “How does someone come to think of themselves as an engineer?” he asks.
It was years ago, when he was in sixth grade, that a bus took him and other students from his school to explore careers in engineering. This mentorship is what he credits with inspiring his own journey to becoming a chemical engineer. He began his career at the University of Illinois as a faculty member in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, where he volunteered for a male-mentoring program, offering a STEM component. When he moved to Houston and to UH, he decided that both male and female students should be engaged in this particular STEM pipeline program.
The “power of exposure” is what Henderson truly believes in. At UH, Henderson built the St. Elmo Brady STEM Academy (SEBA) – named for the first African American chemist to earn his Ph.D. in chemistry— with colleague Rick Greer to provide SEBA students with “doses” of engineering mentorship 24 times a semester. They meet three times a week for eight weeks. The first two meetings of the week take place after school, and the third touchpoint is a family get-together on Saturday morning where parents are encouraged to participate as well.
Though the curriculum is conceived by Greer, Henderson, and faculty partners, the hands-on experiments are taught mostly by UH undergraduate engineering students. The program is funded by the National Science Foundation and other corporate partners, so the college students are paid to teach. But Henderson has observed the altruism of the UH students who give their time to teach the fourth and fifth graders about different types of careers for engineers. “They want to be there – there are intrinsic motivating factors for the college students; teaching hands-on curriculum connects them to their own discipline.”
Going forward, Henderson is interested in doing research regarding the parents who attend on Saturdays, and how their perception of careers for their children have shifted.
Image: Getty Images/iStock/gorodenkoff
