October 6, 2005, Alexandria, VA — JETS, the Junior Engineering Technical Society, announced today that it has received a $55,000 grant from the United Engineering Foundation to fund the fifth revision of its NEAS+, National Engineering Aptitude Search. The NEAS+ is a self-assessment tool that assists high school students in determining their strengths and weaknesses in subject areas that are critical to pursuing engineering or a technology-related degree at a college or university.

The NEAS+ is the only engineering self-assessment tool designed to help students identify and master the academic skills they need to succeed in an engineering or technology program. As a self-assessment tool, the NEAS+ helps students see how math and science correlate to engineering, and determines any additional skills needed by identifying academic strengths and weaknesses. "The NEAS+ does not indicate 'Yes, you should be,' or 'No, you should not be,' an engineer," said Leann Yoder, JETS Executive Director. "Rather," she said, "it helps the student, parent, school counselor, or teacher understand current readiness and aptitude and make appropriate decisions today for success tomorrow. Our goal is to make the NEAS+ even more relevant and helpful to today's prospective engineering and technology students by helping them be more prepared to succeed academically."

NEAS+ is designed to accommodate a variety of educational environments. The assessment may be purchased by individuals (parents/students) or used by school counselors and educators, colleges and universities, or engineering mentors. Colleges and universities can invite students onto their campuses to take the NEAS+ as part of an introduction to engineering day. Used as part of career exploration or an introduction to engineering, the NEAS+ is an extremely useful tool for students planning their future. Students may wish to take the NEAS+ as early as the end of their sophomore year in high school, and again during their junior and senior years.

The revision process will begin with an assessment of the current product, including research with current and potential users (students, parents, educators, and counselors) and research with engineers, engineering society affiliates, college professors, and other post-secondary educators to ensure the product is a current and valuable assessment tool that touches on all areas of engineering. In addition to updating the content, JETS will also redesign and produce the NEAS+ in a graphically enhanced format to be more appealing to high school students. In line with its mission of providing career guidance materials and promoting engineering as an excellent career choice, JETS plans to make the fifth edition NEAS+ available by late spring 2006 to a much broader student population. The NEAS+ was last updated six years ago.

JETS is a non-profit education organization, established in 1950 to inform and excite young people about careers in engineering. JETS now serves more than 40,000 students and 10,000 teachers and holds programs on more than 150 college campuses each year. JETS participants are a diverse group-34 percent of program participants are female, and 22 percent are from groups traditionally underrepresented in engineering and technology. JETS is the core organization representing all disciplines and areas of engineering and serves as the critical link between pre-college students, teachers, parents and school counselors, and the engineering community-professional societies, corporations, and academic institutions.

The United Engineering Foundation Inc. (UEF) is the successor organization to the United Engineering Society (UES), which was founded in 1904 with the generous support of Andrew Carnegie. The original objective of the UES was to provide a united home for the major engineering societies of the day. Today the UEF is a major funding organization to further the development of the engineering profession with an emphasis on multidisciplinary projects.