Description

To address the need for a diverse workforce in the 21st century and create an awareness of the career paths and opportunities that exist in the transportation industry, the College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology at the California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA) has created the Workforce Development Academy for Youth (WDAY). The goal of this program is to build a pipeline of diverse, well-qualified young professionals for the transportation industry. The program works with high school students and teachers to offer academic courses, basic skills, workforce readiness training, internships, extracurricular activities, and career placements to prepare students and place them into the Science, Technology, Engineering,and Math (STEM) college track. The academy emphasizes transportation as a valuable, accessible industry and aims to increase the number of underrepresented minorities and women who directly enter the transportation workforce. It also aims to increase the number of young people who enter college to study engineering or technology and subsequently pursue careers in transportation- and infrastructure-related careers. The WDAY program included STEM instruction, leadership development activities, field trips, job skills building activities, hands-on engineering projects and research application, internships, and more to empower participants to build competencies critical to academic and professional success. The program was conducted as a full-year program with 25 student participants from 18 high schools. Student academic progress was carefully monitored throughout the duration of the program to assess the effectiveness of its various components, and further evaluation data was collected from both students and faculty in the form of surveys, written feedback, and observation notes. Overall, the evaluations were overwhelmingly positive. Many participants reported planning to continue their education in STEM disciplines or enter the transportation workforce directly, making WDAY an important steppingstone on their academic and professional journeys.

Publication Date

1-2026

Publication Type

Report

Topic

Workforce and Labor, Transportation Engineering, Transportation Technology

Digital Object Identifier

10.31979/mti.2025.2460

MTI Project

2460

Mineta Transportation Institute URL

https://transweb.sjsu.edu/research/2460-Workforce-Development-Academy-for-Youth

Keywords

Workforce development, STEM, Transportation Outreach, Transportation education, Transportation career

Disciplines

Transportation

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