Educators are increasingly pressured to include experiences for students which will help develop noncognitive skills. Noncognitive skills lie outside of the physiological ability to process information and encompass adjacent concepts including soft-skills, 21st century skills, or employability skills. Grit, optimism, and self-efficacy are three…

The Idaho 4-H Teen Conference program provides youths with opportunities to develop leadership skills and confidence, explore options for after high school, and work with adults as partners. The conference has been modified to include subject matter and experiences that encourage teens to "go on" to postsecondary education. Recent…

Summer outreach programs provide pre-college participants an introduction to college life and exposure to engineering in an effort to raise the level of interest and bring more students into engineering fields. The Junior Engineering, Mathematics, and Science (JEMS) program is a project-based summer workshop in which teams of high school students…