Education Research Grant: Examining the Post-Baccalaureate Decisions of High Ability Black STEM students

教育研究补助金：检查高能力黑人 STEM 学生的学士学位后决定

• 批准号: 0624693
• 负责人: Lorraine Fleming
• 金额: $ 101.88万
• 依托单位: Howard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-09-01 至 2012-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0624693&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Education; Research; Grant; Examining; Post

Howard University will conduct research that contributes to the basic understanding of how students navigate their undergraduate STEM education and eventually make the transition into STEM graduate study. While a number of studies describe the trends and status of African American participation in STEM careers, more work is needed to understand the mindset, thought processes and experiences of students who do pursue graduate degrees in STEM. We know little about the factors that lead students to pursue STEM graduate degrees. Nor do we truly understand the unique role of the HBCU experience that leads to that choice. Howard proposes to conduct a research study to describe how some students at Howard University, an HBCU, make choices about their post-baccalaureate careers. This study will lead to a better understanding of the common traits and characteristics of those students who choose to pursue STEM graduate degrees. The intellectual merit of this proposed research lies in understanding how HBCU STEM undergraduates navigate their post-BS career choices. Through interviews, focus groups and surveys, we will identify the conceptual foundations students need in order to pursue graduate STEM education, seek to understand this transitional experience across gender lines, disciplines and citizenship and transform the findings and insights gained from this research into practice. Most importantly, however, we aim to contribute to the literature by expanding the knowledge base about this understudied group (i.e. African Americans at HBCUs) which will allow the HBCU STEM community to identify where additional research is needed and how to enhance the effectiveness of intervention programs. Although we are particularly interested in those students who pursue STEM graduate degrees, we will explore the full array of options that students have, including professional school (medicine, dentistry, business, law) and immediate entry into the workforce. The research team is led by an engineer with extensive education research experience and an educator with experience in STEM education research. For the last three years, this team has overseen a longitudinal study as part of the Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education (CAEE) funded by NSF. Preliminary findings from this study sparked the interest in examining career paths and the post-baccalaureate experiences of African American students in the sciences and engineering. The dissemination goal of this project is to share the findings with a variety of audiences to enhance the scholarly discussion on two broad topics; increasing the numbers of minorities who pursue STEM graduate education, and increasing the awareness of the importance of conducting STEM-based education research in the HBCU community. The engineering and science community as well as the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning community will be interested in the results of this study. As a national leader in the on-campus production of African American Ph.D.s and the production of Black undergraduates who go on to earn Ph.D.s, Howard is uniquely capable and holds a social responsibility in creating these broader impacts.

霍华德大学将进行研究，从而有助于对学生如何在本科STEM教育中进行基本了解，并最终过渡到STEM研究生学习。尽管许多研究描述了非裔美国人参与STEM职业的趋势和地位，但需要更多的工作才能理解真正攻读STEM研究生学位的学生的思维方式，思维过程和经验。我们对导致学生攻读STEM研究生学位的因素知之甚少。我们也不真正了解导致这种选择的HBCU体验的独特作用。霍华德（Howard）提议进行一项研究，以描述HBCU霍华德大学（Howard University）的一些学生如何选择其后掌loaulate的职业。这项研究将使人们更好地了解那些选择攻读STEM研究生学位的学生的共同特征和特征。这项拟议的研究的智力优点在于了解HBCU STEM如何在本科生的职业生涯选择中导航。通过访谈，焦点小组和调查，我们将确定学生为进行研究生STEM教育所需的概念基础，试图了解跨性别线，学科和公民身份的这种过渡经验，并改变从这项研究中获得的发现和见解。但是，最重要的是，我们的目标是通过扩大有关该研究研究群体的知识基础（即HBCUS的非洲裔美国人）来为文献做出贡献，这将使HBCU STEM社区能够确定需要额外的研究以及如何增强干预计划的有效性。尽管我们对那些攻读STEM研究生学位的学生特别感兴趣，但我们将探讨学生提供的各种选择，包括专业学校（医学，牙科，商业，法律）和立即进入劳动力。研究团队由具有丰富教育研究经验的工程师和具有STEM教育研究经验的教育者领导。在过去的三年中，该团队一直监督一项纵向研究，这是NSF资助的工程教育发展中心（CAEE）的一部分。这项研究的初步发现引发了对研究职业道路以及科学和工程学中非洲裔美国学生的后洞经历的兴趣。该项目的传播目标是与各种受众分享发现，以增强有关两个广泛主题的学术讨论。增加了追求STEM研究生教育的少数民族的数量，并提高了对HBCU社区进行基于STEM的教育研究的重要性的认识。工程和科学界以及教学社区的奖学金将对本研究的结果感兴趣。作为校园内非裔美国人博士学位的国家领导者，以及继续获得博士学位的黑人本科生的生产，霍华德具有独特的能力，并承担着社会责任，以创造这些更广泛的影响。