Strengthening K–12 Outreach

Summer has come to an end. I hope everyone had a chance to spend some quality time with family and is ready to begin the new fiscal year.

One highlight of my summer was the opportunity to participate in the Post Leaders Workshop that SAME conducted in Minneapolis, Minn. These sessions, held each winter and summer, are important to training and growing our leadership. Although we had 57 Posts participate in the two workshops, I wonder why we don’t have close to 100 percent of the Posts participating. Why doesn’t every Post feel it is important to invest in training its Post leadership? We should be sending our
high-energy SAME members to these leadership workshops to “build future SAME leaders.” If SAME is going to continue to serve our nation, we must do a better job of preparing our leaders at all levels. This is a small investment we should not hesitate to make.

At the national level, SAME has significantly increased our investment in members by using Education and Mentoring (E&M) Funds to cover the registration and hotel costs for participation in the Post Leaders Workshop. In addition, E&M Funds are used to pay a travel stipend to national award winners for their attendance to the national conference. The feedback we have received from these investments in our future leaders has been overwhelmingly positive. At the Post level, your E&M Funds could be used in much the same way. Rather than just funding student scholarships, invest some of those dollars in the professional development of members. For example:

• Send high school students and mentors to the SAME Engineering & Construction Camps.
• Sponsor Young Member (YM) representatives from your Post to attend the national conference. This allows our YMs to experience SAME and the military engineer profession in an entirely different light. I would submit that our active participation rate is extremely high for members who have attended a national conference because they see a “big picture” view of SAME that helps them better understand the impact SAME has on the engineering profession.
• Pay the travel costs for a Post leader to attend the Post Leaders Workshop every year.
• Reward a Regional Vice President (RVP) Medal recipient by covering part of their expenses to attend a Regional Conference.

By investing in our members we will retain them and, more importantly, we will further strengthen SAME, our mission and our country through their active participation.

SAME has established three focus areas for our national leadership during my term of office in support of the SAME Strategic Plan. I discussed our first area, “Support to the Military Engineer Community,” in the June issue of SAME News and our second area, “Continuing Education,” in the August issue. This month I would like to discuss our third focus area,
“K-12 Outreach.”

Clay Kelly, Chair of the K-12 Outreach Committee, will bring to the Fall Board of Direction meeting recommendations on K-12 outreach programs. The recommendations were presented at the August Post Leaders Workshop and received widespread endorsement. Since these recommendations will impact every SAME Post, I’d like to present them here for your review and feedback to Clay at clay.kelly@strand.com, or to your RVP.

The K-12 Outreach Committee has reviewed various programs, surveyed Posts regarding current programs and evaluated this information with a view toward fulfilling the SAME Strategic Plan. The K-12 Outreach Committee is recommending five programs for SAME Posts to embrace and foster:

• Engineering & Construction Camps. The SAME camps, under the leadership of Col. Ronald B. Brown, USA (Ret.), Sundt Construction, consistently excel at providing high school students insight into an engineering career in an exciting, yet challenging, format. The camps will continue to be at the top of our list of K-12 Outreach Programs. Posts are encouraged to use E&M Funds to sponsor students and mentors to the camps.
• The West Point Bridge Competition. This online computer program provides middle school and high school students an opportunity to learn about engineering through a realistic, hands-on problem-solving experience—building a truss bridge. We have received extremely positive feedback from those who have participated in this program. Additionally, the event can be implemented by any Post—regardless of size—as a competition among local students.
• Boy Scouts of America (BSA) Engineering, Architecture and Environmental Science Merit Badges. Many of our members were either active as Boy Scouts in their younger years or are involved now as parents. The concept is for SAME Posts to put together a list of volunteers who are willing to work with local Troops as Merit Badge Counselors for these three specific merit badges. BSA summer camps, merit badge days and other events also may enable Post mentors to assist a group of boys in a short period of time.
• Girl Scouts of America (GSA) Environmental and Engineering Patches. The Environmental Protection Agency sponsors the Environmental Patch and the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) sponsors the Engineering Patch. SAME is considering a partnership with SWE to explore the possibility of elevating the Engineering Patch to a fully-recognized GSA merit badge. The concept on implementation would be similar to the Boy Scouts, whereas Posts take the lead in gathering volunteers and working with the local Troops to ensure that volunteers are available to assist.
• School Based Programs. Posts can collaborate with local middle and high schools to support whatever math, science and engineering programs they sponsor, such as MathCounts and Future Cities. The K-12 Outreach Committee also recommends that Posts sponsor some type of educational activity for middle and high school teachers and counselors to provide them greater understanding of the architecture, engineering, environmental and military professions.

Following the Board’s action on these programs, the K-12 Outreach Committee will be asking for Posts to volunteer to pilot these programs to ensure that they can be implemented by our Posts. The Board will then evaluate the results and determine how these programs should be incorporated into the Post Streamer criteria.

SAME’s K-12 outreach programs provide our Posts the opportunity to spark interest in future engineers. Doing so enhances our national security, provides for our communal needs, launches rewarding careers and helps sustain our country as a global
leader in engineering.

Maj. Gen. Del R. Eulberg, P.E., F.SAME, USAF
SAME President, 2007 – 2008