Student Projects
High School Initiative Program (HSIP)

Tour group

Project Manager

Andres Rojas, Student

Amount Requested

$5,000

Summary

Our main project for our upcoming year will be our flagship outreach event, the High School Initiative Program (HSIP). HSIP is a 1-day event where we have many Chicago high schools and their students come to the Evanston campus and learn all there is about Northwestern and studying STEM. The vast majority of students come from minority, low-income backgrounds, and for many, this is the first time they’ve ever been on a college campus and been able to learn about the opportunities that college can provide. Our HSIP event this past year had over 100+ students, teachers, and parents, as well as many volunteers, faculty, and other student orgs. Our intent for our next iteration of HSIP is to be able to expand our reach to more Chicagoland schools, and have much more programming available during our event available to students. This experience is extremely beneficial for our high school audience since they are exposed to opportunities that were not easily accessible to them, and they learn so much about the whole undergraduate experience, everything from studying, clubs, and research. HSIP also provides great value to our own undergraduate SHPE members as well, allowing them to share their experiences with younger students, acting as mentors and teachers. Our undergrad members are also able to showcase their skills in our engineering activities, where they lead groups of several students through a demonstration.

Planned Activities/Investments

Our main objective is to show all our high school participants the opportunities that await them in college and how it's in reach for every one of them. Activities that we have planned to make HSIP a great success is to gather our teams together at an early stage, so we can plan out all the outreach and programming months in advance, allowing for a smoother overall process. We will also review along the way, comparing it our previous HSIP event and see what we can further improve, or if there's something we can add. We will also train all our volunteers and help them be able to lead groups effectively, as well as be able to be proper mentors.

Impact

Our project will impact two main groups, high school students from the Chicago area, and our own undergraduate members and affiliated clubs. HSIP is focused towards teaching our invited high school students as much as possible about how it's like to learn about STEM at the college-level, as well as share with them other aspects about the student experience, such as other clubs, research, and even just exploring campus. We also want to show them that there resources out there to help them with their education be it financial aid helping pay for it, their peers helping them, or mentors that can help them learn and go beyond. For our undergrad students, they will be the main drivers of this event, helping organize every aspect of the project, from setup to action, where they will ultimately lead their own groups of students through tours and activities on campus. The main impact will be in our member's own professional and personal development, learning and growing to be better team members, leaders, and mentors. We will evaluate this impact by observing and recording all our HSIP events, and then asking for feedback from both students and volunteers to help improve it.

Sustainability

HSIP was first held many years ago by previous SHPE exec boards, and this past year was the first one held since the start of the pandemic. We hope to expand our capabilities and reach of HSIP with the Murphy Grant funding, but we also have many alternative sources of founding beyond the limits of the Murphy Society. For instance, we have fundraising ventures within our club, selling merch, food, and having fun events throughout the year that helps raise us money. We also receive money from McCormick, which has been able to support many of our events throughout the years. We have also recently expanded our efforts in getting more corporate sponsors, which have also helped in funding our club activities.

Deliverables

  • Attendance Numbers (# of students and # of high schools)
  • Volunteer Numbers (NU undergrads who help and lead the groups)
  • Presentations (from student groups, research, faculty, etc.)

Previous Projects

Last year, we received funding for our SHPE National Convention, and we had amazing success. Combining with other sources of funding, we were able to send 25+ students to the conference, where several students received and accepted internship offers from Bank of America, Boeing, Medtronic, Eli Lily, Lockheed Martin, etc. All our students were also able to connect and network with recruiters, as well as with other SHPE undergrads from around the nation.

Budget Overview

This is an estimate for our projected audience of 150 total participants

  • $1,500 Event T-Shirts: $10 * 150.
  • $2,250 Catering (Lunch, Snacks, and Beverages): $15 * 150.
  • $1,250 Programming Equipment (i.e. STEM kits): 1500 + 2250 + 1250.

Total: $5,000

Advisor Sign-off

SHPE - Ellen Worsdall, Undergraduate Engineering