Abstract:

The American Association of University Woman (AAUW) Jackson Branch and Tougaloo College Student Affiliate group, National Coalition of 100 Black Women (NC100BW) Inc., Central. Mississippi Chapter and Tamara Brown at Praxair, co-hosted a Tech Savvy STEM/STEAM Conference for a five-year period (2015 – 2019) for young girls and boys in the local communities. A total of 800 participants consisting of females, males, parents, teachers, student volunteers, presenters, sponsors, and college representatives attended these conferences.

Our goal was to encourage this young generation (from 5th - 9th grade) and their parents to attend an event focused on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics activities. This one-day camp consisted of five activities involving physical science (physics and chemistry), life science, mathematics, technology, and engineering along with a career fair. Participants in these events made history by capturing opportunities that could be considered for becoming our future scientists and young inventors.

From our experience as STEM professionals and researchers at Tougaloo College, we have found that elementary school students and their parents are highly motivated to participate in summer programs and many of these students have high levels of interest in math and science-related areas. It is for this and other reasons that it is important to maintain their enthusiasm through their middle school years. When math and science courses become more challenging, students tend to steer away from these areas. Without summer programs, a gap develops and continues to widen. There are limited summer enrichment programs with the focus on keeping students interested in pursuing careers in these areas.

It is imperative to continue providing programs of this magnitude to prepare students for the emerging trends in STEM for the 21st century. Additional funding, methods, and techniques will require modifications in pedagogical and methodologies in a virtual format that can offer the same benefits as a face-to-face format. It has been challenging during the COVID-19 Pandemic period to produce the same quality of services.

This study will consist of comparing the results from program evaluations and questionnaires from the participants who attended the conferences over the five-year period. Predictions and recommendations of future programs that will offer the same quality to promote educating students to become imaginative, self-directed, lifelong learners and mindful thinkers, committed to leadership and services in a global society will require the use of analytical tools. We will analyze the data hierarchical clustering techniques and partitioning clustering methods such as the k-means algorithm.

Keywords:

Cluster, retention rates, graduation rates, HBCU, K-means, hierarchical clustering, Higher Education, Algorithms, Data Analytics.