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

霍华德大学将开展研究，以帮助学生基本了解他们如何驾驭本科STEM教育，并最终过渡到STEM研究生学习。虽然许多研究描述了非裔美国人参与STEM职业的趋势和现状，但需要做更多的工作来了解那些攻读STEM研究生学位的学生的心态、思维过程和经历。我们对导致学生攻读STEM研究生学位的因素知之甚少。我们也没有真正理解HBCU经历的独特作用，导致了这种选择。霍华德提议进行一项调查研究，以描述霍华德大学（HBCU）的一些学生如何选择他们的学士学位后职业。这项研究将有助于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点。这项拟议研究的智力价值在于了解HBCU STEM本科生如何在学士学位后选择职业。通过访谈、焦点小组和调查，我们将确定学生追求STEM研究生教育所需的概念基础，寻求理解跨性别、学科和公民身份的这种过渡经验，并将从本研究中获得的发现和见解转化为实践。然而，最重要的是，我们的目标是通过扩大关于这一未被充分研究的群体（即HBCU的非裔美国人）的知识库来为文献做出贡献，这将使HBCU STEM社区能够确定需要进行额外研究的地方以及如何提高干预计划的有效性。虽然我们对那些攻读STEM研究生学位的学生特别感兴趣，但我们将探索学生拥有的各种选择，包括专业学校（医学、牙科、商业、法律）和立即进入劳动力市场。研究团队由一名具有丰富教育研究经验的工程师和一名具有STEM教育研究经验的教育家领导。在过去的三年里，这个团队监督了一项纵向研究，该研究是由美国国家科学基金会资助的工程教育进步中心（CAEE）的一部分。这项研究的初步结果激发了人们对研究非裔美国学生在科学和工程领域的职业道路和学士学位后经历的兴趣。该项目的传播目标是与不同的受众分享研究结果，以加强对两个广泛主题的学术讨论；增加攻读STEM研究生教育的少数族裔人数，并提高HBCU社区对开展STEM教育研究重要性的认识。工程界和科学界以及教与学界的学者将对这项研究的结果感兴趣。在培养非裔美国人博士和培养继续攻读博士学位的黑人本科生方面，霍华德大学处于全国领先地位，在创造这些更广泛的影响方面具有独特的能力和社会责任。

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.