Determining the community college audience

With the continued need for more engineers and computer scientists in the United States, efforts to educate and to encourage more students to consider engineering are increasing at the community college (CC) level. Students at non-metropolitan CCs may especially need to have someone reach out to them with encouragement about attending a four year school and to consider engineering as a career. Therefore a question that needs to be answered is this: "How can a university best do outreach to a non-metropolitan CC?" In our experience, having a captive audience in the classroom is the best way to reach CC students with information about engineering. In this way, their attention is focused on engineering for at least a few minutes. The next question that begs itself is: "What is the most effective engineering message for rural CC students?" That question suggests the next one: "Who is the audience at the rural CC?" This paper describes the results of a short questionnaire given to 116 students at a nonmetropolitan CC. This work is sponsored by a National Science Foundation STEP grant. The questionnaire was given at the end of a 20-60 minutes presentation in a classroom by an engineering university professor. It was not surprising to learn that the students wanted more information on financing a Bachelor's degree and on the transfer process; a number of students also wanted more information on engineering. We note the information by gender, ethnicity, and age. Suggestions are given for using these results to advantage when designing the engineering outreach message according to the audience.