Introducing Transportation-Related Careers to Minority High School Students in Massachusetts Underserved Communities

The Robert R. Taylor Network (RRTN) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will pilot a program on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and transportation-related careers to minority high school students from underserved communities from the Brockton, MA area. The program will be based at the MIT and executed during the Summer, Fall, and Winter of 2011. The objective of the program is to develop the interests of the aforementioned students in STEM and to look at careers in transportation as economically viable. RRTN proposes an introductory workshop and site visits for at least 15 students on "The Business of Transportation", culminating in attendance at the 26th Annual Black Engineer of the Year (BEYA) Conference in Philadelphia, PA in February 2012. Students will be recruited from Brockton High School and or the South East Vocational Technical High School as well as students in the New York City area by way of the Center for Quality Urban Education's (CQUE) High Performance Learning (HPL) Institute. Over the course of the program the students will be introduced to the following 4 topics in transportation via site visits with practicing professionals: Land, Sea, Air, and Safety in association with MA Department of Transportation and BEYA corporate and government sponsors. They will begin by discussing the business of transportation as it pertains to each area from professionals in the field. There will be site visits to transportation workplaces where the students will be able to interact and observe real world transportation operations and professionals. Where possible, there will be MIT faculty research presentations in transportation. The students will also conduct and present research on the history of minority contribution to the transportation industry, such as the work of Garrett Morgan, Wesley Harris, Meredith Gourdine and James H. Williams.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $10000.00
• Contract Numbers:

  DTRT07-G-0001

  MITE23-13

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Research and Innovative Technology Administration

  Department of Transportation
  1200 New Jersey Avneue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Principal Investigators:

  Warde, Cardinal

• Start Date: 20100901
• Expected Completion Date: 0
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• Source Data: RiP Project 31897

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: High school students; Minorities; Transportation; Transportation careers
• Uncontrolled Terms: Transportation professionals
• Geographic Terms: Boston (Massachusetts)
• Subject Areas: Education and Training; Transportation (General);

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01467315
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: New England University Transportation Center
• Contract Numbers: DTRT07-G-0001, MITE23-13
• Files: UTC, RIP, USDOT
• Created Date: Jan 3 2013 3:31PM