Incoming first-year students build AI literacy in summer engineering programs

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State’s Center for Engineering Outreach and Inclusion is reimagining two summer programs for incoming first-year students. This year, both the Engineering Summer Bridge program and the Multicultural Engineering Program Orientation (MEPO) launched new activities to help students build artificial intelligence (AI) literacy and other valuable skills for their careers.

Engineering Summer Bridge: Start with community, follow with AI systems

Engineering Summer Bridge is a six-week program that prepares students for the university environment through various academic and social experiences. Students are introduced to concepts from foundational math and science classes, and the program provides experiences such as group study sessions, professional development workshops and cultural immersion opportunities.

This summer, Engineering Summer Bridge offered Critical AI Literacy Lunch and Learns, weekly lectures covering topics across the development and deployment of AI systems. The lecture content drew on research conducted by the AI Institute for Societal Decision Making (AI-SDM), an initiative “to develop human-centric AI for societal good” led by Carnegie Mellon University with collaboration from several other institutions including Penn State.

Over the course of the Lunch and Learns, students conceptualized effective solutions for disaster response and recovery, according to Christopher Dancy, associate professor of computer science and engineering, of human-centered computing and social informatics and of African American studies at Penn State.

“We started by having the students think about the communities they wanted to help and the positive impacts they wanted to make,” said Dancy, who serves as a Penn State principal investigator within the AI-SDM. “That way, students could identify situations that could feasibly be improved with AI systems, rather than forcing AI into their designs from the outset.”

Dancy said the lunchtime setting was chosen with the aim of creating a low-stakes learning environment that would allow students to engage with lecture content without getting overwhelmed.

Dancy previously participated in Engineering Summer Bridge as an incoming undergraduate student at Penn State. Having received his bachelor’s degree in computer science and doctoral degree in AI and cognitive science from Penn State, Dancy now supports the same summer program that once supported him.

“We bring in the cognitive social sciences and a bit of the humanities, in addition to discussions on AI models and human-AI interaction,” Dancy said. “This is a unique opportunity for students to build a solid foundation in all these subjects that are going to be essential for their coursework and their careers.”

Multicultural Engineering Program Orientation: Fostering human connections for improved outcomes

MEPO is a four-day program that introduces students to the College of Engineering the week before they begin their first fall semester. Participants connect with campus resources, upper-level peer mentors, industry recruiters and Penn State alumni. The students also work in teams during a design competition, developing and presenting prototypes to address their assigned challenge.

Since 2024, the design competition has included access to a custom chatbot developed in collaboration with The Human in Computing and Cognition (THiCC) Lab at Penn State. According to Dancy, who directs the THiCC Lab, the chatbot is specifically trained to guide students through each year’s design challenges, enhancing the chatbot’s factual accuracy and preventing the chatbot from suggesting complete solutions.

Lupita Zavala, a third-year undergraduate student majoring in mechanical engineering, supported the student teams as a design assistant during this year’s competition.

“Each team was given a ‘power up’ that would improve their gadget’s functionality, and a ‘power down’ that would constrain it,” Zavala said. “The students used the chatbot to figure out how those advantages and obstacles would work in their assigned scenarios. They incorporated what they learned into their final designs.”

Sierra Wolbert, a first-year undergraduate student majoring in mechanical engineering, participated in this year’s MEPO. Her group was tasked with helping hazmat teams contain or neutralize dangerous gases spreading through a skyscraper.

“We had a defined problem, but sometimes it was challenging to keep track of all the ins and outs of the fictional scenario,” Wolbert said. “The chatbot helped us look into the world we were working with, so we used it like a sounding board to make sure we understood everything correctly. It was really helpful in that aspect.”

Lauren Griggs, the director of the Multicultural Engineering Program, which houses Engineering Summer Bridge and MEPO, said both programs have been linked with improved student outcomes. In particular, students who identified as underrepresented minorities were more likely to remain in the College of Engineering during their time at Penn State if they had participated in either Engineering Summer Bridge or MEPO, compared to similar students who did not participate in either program.

“Engineering Summer Bridge and MEPO are the first touchpoints that incoming first-year students have within MEP, and often with the College of Engineering as a whole,” said Griggs, who also serves as a Penn State principal investigator within the AI-SDM. “In a world increasingly shaped by AI systems, our programs remain committed to fostering human connection. Through MEP, students find communities that serve as the supportive foundation for their academic journeys, and the relationships that they build carry on throughout their lifetime.”

Sponsors of this year’s Engineering Summer Bridge included Williams Companies, Saint-Gobain and the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation. Sponsors of this year’s MEPO networking fair included PwC, Southland, KCI Technologies, Clark Construction, BR+A Consulting Engineers and Penn State’s Applied Research Laboratory. Annual sponsors of the Multicultural Engineering Program include Air Products, PPG, General Motors, Shell Oil Company, Northrop Grumman and Boeing.

This work was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) AI Institute for Societal Decision Making (AI-SDM) under grant number IIS 2229881. This year’s MEPO was supported by the NSF under award number 2144887. This content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the funders.