From Outreach to Enrollment: Exploring the Influence of STEM Outreach Activities on Student Career Choices and Perceptions

In this paper, we describe various STEM outreach activities conducted at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (UNIZG-FER), as well as the results of a survey conducted among faculty students to determine if and how our activities have contributed to their choice of studies and future careers. For more than 12 years, the UNIZG-FER has systematically organized activities related to the popularization of science and STEM outreach, through a series of events, lectures, workshops, and student visits. Annually, through various activities, we directly engage with several thousand children of various ages, from preschoolers to high school students who are in the process of selecting which college to enroll in. Some of these students have chosen to continue their studies at our faculty, so we ran a questionnaire among freshmen and sophomore students to better understand whether and to what extent our activities influenced their enrollment choices. The results show that the majority of students participated in some of our activities through their pre-university education. Although students generally state that these activities were not crucial in their choice of faculty, they believe that the activities strengthened their decision and intensified their positive attitude towards STEM fields in general.