Our Mission

The ME Ambassadors Program seeks to close the gender and racial gaps in engineering by engaging in diversity- and equity-focused K-12 outreach in our community.

A 2018 Pew Research report identified mechanical engineering as having the lowest inclusion of women, at 8%, with only 10% of mechanical engineers being Black or Hispanic. 

The program, modeled after other successful programs nationwide, aims to connect K-12 students and mechanical engineering undergraduates starting in third grade, with the goal of reaching underrepresented students. Current ME undergraduates will engage in peer-to-peer interactions with elementary and middle school students over a three-year period to help youth embrace their role in creating change using engineering skills and to see themselves as future engineers in order to increase diversity in the mechanical engineering pipeline. The ME Ambassadors Program aims to serve our local communities and ensure that the next generation of mechanical engineers represents all backgrounds.

The ME Ambassadors Program at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Mechanical Engineering recruits undergraduate students to engage in peer-to-peer interactions with elementary and middle school students to serve as mentors, design their own activities and experiments to increase the students’ interest in engineering, and provide information about the path to becoming an engineer for students in K-12 schools that have limited STEM resources.