Welcome

The Office of Educational Partnerships is located in CECS Outreach that is under the Academic Affairs Office at UCF's College of Engineering and Computer Science. The Office of Educational Partnerships is primarily responsible for developing engineering education programs at the pre-college level which contributes to our college's recruitment mission. Our office is a resource for faculty to connect with local, state and national schools and multiple other industry, educational and professional organizations interested in K12 engineering education. We encourage representatives from industry, government, professional, educational and community organizations to contact our office to learn more about how engineering education may be incorporated into their programs/activities. On behalf of the Director of Educational Partnerships, I welcome you to our site and ask that you please take a couple of minutes to learn more about our programs.

About our Programs

For almost a decade, our college has hosted a national technology literacy program called the the Internet Science and Technology Fair (ISTF) to encourage young students to explore science and engineering careers. In realizing the benefits student teams reported working with on-line ISTF scientists and engineers, we created the Why Engineering Survey to learn first-hand why practicing professionals became engineers and to better understand decisions they made during their early years, their academic studies and while in the workplace. An outcome of the survey was that over 80% of the engineers surveyed did not come in contact with an engineer in the classroom prior to the post-secondary education. As a result, our office developed the Engineering Futures Forum working with area high schools to to acquaint students with information from the Why Engineering Survey, learn about engineering futures (from professional engineers) and discover engineering degree programs available at UCF.

A Broader Mission

Our office recognizes that the future of Florida is dependent on a strong engineering workforce and we must build on existing engineering education infrastructure (programs that work) to increase the number and diversity of young students that select engineering as a career. In response we are working on an initiative called Building Engineering Education Infrastructure. CECS Outreach will again be hosting our annual pre-college engineering education conference.