Workforce Development Academy for Youth

Abstract:

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.

Publications:

Workforce Development Academy for Youth (Full Report)

Research Brief

Authors:

Hassan Hashemian
Dr. Hashemian has been a professor of Civil Engineering at California State University, Los Angeles for forty-five years. He has been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in transportation and traffic engineering, transportation planning, traffic flow analysis, engineering economics, and probability and statistics. In addition, Dr. Hashemian has extensive experience managing federal and state-funded research and training programs. In the past thirty years, he has managed over 36 training programs and 35 research and consulting projects. He has also demonstrated success in many outreach projects, including the Infrastructure Academy Transportation Program, the Highway Construction Training, the Summer Transportation Institute, the Garrett Morgan Education Program, and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Fellowship Program. Dr. Hashemian is a highly respected educator. On January 11, 2018, at the Transportation Research Board meeting in Washington, D.C., he received the FHWA Public Service Award for his outstanding dedication, leadership, and contributions to advancing transportation education, research, and workforce development. He has won a number of other awards for research and teaching, including the Exemplary Achievement Award from Secretary of Transportation Mr. Rodney Slater in 1988, ITE in 1995, FHWA in 2001 and 2002, and the Outstanding Professor Award at CSU LA in 2006, 2007, and 2012. Dr. Hashemian has presented several technical papers at international and national conferences focusing on transportation engineering. For the present project, Dr. Hashemian was responsible for the academic leadership of the program, including the selection of instructors, academic assessments, and teaching. He was also responsible for implementing the statement of work according to the funding requirements of the MTI. Dr. Hashemian received his BS and MS from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Published:

January 2026

Keywords:

Workforce development

STEM

Transportation Outreach

Transportation education

Transportation career