Outreach
Akamai in the Community
Students in the electro-optics program will be encouraged to participate in Akamai in the Community, as both a mechanism to recruit new students and to enhance retention rates in the electro-optics program.
Each year six students will be paid a stipend to adopt a high school classroom. The MCC Student Coordinator will match each student with a classroom and teacher at one of the six high schools on Maui. They will visit their classroom once a month to share their experience, help out, do activities (perhaps adapted from the electro-optics courses),and arrange field trips.
Students who have completed the Akamai Internship can share their internship project and perhaps arrange a visit to their host company.
Through our partnership with the Maui Economic Development Board, participants will also connect with existing programs, such as: Project EAST, a service learning, project-based high school lab; Excite Camp,Akamai Workforce Initiative, 2008 9 which aligns the sophisticated astronomy of Polynesian ancestors with current career pathways; Tech Careers job shadowing for middle and high school students; and Future Scientists & Engineers. These programs provide a more informal place for students to “talk story” with the Akamai alumni role models.
Students who participate in Akamai in the Community will essentially be completing a service learning experience, which will build confidence, connect their experience in college to the outside world, and help them to establish an identity as a successful student on a technical career path. Service learning and community involvement is valuable and increasingly included in programs to retain students.
To assess our impact in building awareness among the high school population, we will conduct a “Maui Career Opportunities” survey in representative high school classes toward the end of each academic year. We will compare the results from those who have been visited by Akamai and those who have not.