What Is a Pre-College Education Committee?

A pre-college education committee is an organizational body within a professional or technical society charged with planning, coordinating, and evaluating programs that bring engineering and science content to students in kindergarten through grade twelve. Within IEEE, the pre-college education function is administered through the Educational Activities Board (EAB), which oversees broad planning of IEEE educational activities including pre-university outreach, curriculum development, teacher professional development, and community engagement. These committees serve as the institutional bridge between working engineers and the students who may follow them into the profession.

IEEE's pre-college committees operate at multiple geographic scales: the global Educational Activities Board sets strategy and manages flagship programs, while regional, section, and chapter-level educational activity committees implement programs in local communities. This layered structure allows global initiatives to be adapted to local educational contexts, languages, and curricula.

Committee Scope and Functions

A pre-college education committee within IEEE typically takes responsibility for several related functions. It identifies and funds outreach initiatives, provides volunteers with resources and training, coordinates with schools and school districts, and evaluates program outcomes. The IEEE Educational Activities Board Operations Manual defines the governance structure, committee composition, and reporting obligations for these activities at the global level. At the regional level, educational activity committee chairs work with section volunteers to develop programming suited to local needs, including in-school presentations, engineering design challenges, and participation in national STEM competitions.

Program Development and Volunteer Coordination

Most pre-college education committees in IEEE rely heavily on volunteer engineers and scientists who donate time to classroom visits, after-school workshops, and teacher professional development events. The IEEE Teacher In-Service Program (TISP) provides a structured framework for volunteers to deliver hands-on engineering workshops to school teachers, who then integrate those materials into their own classrooms, multiplying the reach of each volunteer hour. Committees also support structured grant programs: the IEEE TryEngineering Pre-University STEM Grant Program funds volunteer-led outreach projects, with recipients drawn from IEEE sections around the world. Program development work includes adapting lesson plans from platforms such as TeachEngineering, a curriculum library maintained through a collaboration of more than fifty U.S. higher education institutions, for use in IEEE-branded outreach events.

Assessment and Accountability

Pre-college education committees are expected to track participation data, document educational outcomes where possible, and report results to the overseeing board. Metrics typically include the number of students and teachers reached, geographic and demographic diversity of program recipients, and volunteer hours contributed. IEEE sections with active pre-college committees submit annual activity reports that inform EAB decisions about where to concentrate grant funding and volunteer resources. The emphasis on outcome measurement reflects the broader shift in STEM education policy toward evidence-based program design, a trend documented in research such as the Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research, which publishes studies on K-12 engineering program effectiveness.

Applications

Pre-college education committees contribute to programs across a range of contexts, including:

• In-school engineering design challenges and classroom presentations
• Teacher professional development workshops in engineering and technology
• After-school and summer STEM camps for K-12 students
• Regional and national STEM competitions and science fairs
• Community outreach targeting underrepresented groups in engineering