Recruitment Strategies for Broadening Participation Programs in STEM
Lawrence O. Flowers, Ph.D.
Abstract
Increasing the diversity of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)
workforce has been an elusive national goal for many years. A potential solution to better
prepare underrepresented students for science and engineering careers are broadening
participation programs. Broadening participation programs in STEM are designed to improve
students’ education and professional outcomes. Broadening participation programs have produced
several decades of promising data that highlight the utility of these initiatives to generate
positive academic and occupational outcomes for underserved students. Effective recruitment
techniques that result in the attainment of program enrollment goals are paramount. Despite the
importance of participant recruitment to a program’s success, there are very few scholarly
publications that address the issue of recruitment techniques designed to satisfy enrollment
aims. Technological advances in the last twenty years have significantly improved worldwide
communications. A variety of promising communication tools have afforded broadening participation
program directors more opportunities to market their program and recruit participants from around
the world. This article focuses on applicable traditional and online STEM program recruitment
tactics that have shown to yield positive results in student enrollment. This article also calls
for the increase in statistically robust research studies that seek to determine the effect of a
specific recruitment strategy on recruitment goal attainment with respect to gender, ethnicity,
geography, and educational level.
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