Collaborative Research: NRT-IGE: Deploying Holistic Admissions and Critical Support Structures to Increase Diversity and Retention of US Citizens in Physics Graduate Programs

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The issue of diversity in STEM is of national importance. The future needs of the US technological workforce necessitate cultivating the entire domestic talent pool, especially groups historically and currently underrepresented in STEM: women, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans. Successfully transitioning underrepresented students to graduate studies is key to this vision, but the majority of STEM PhD programs are failing in this regard. This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award in the Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) Track to the Rochester Institute of Technology and the American Physical Society (APS) will explore interventions that may help increase the access of US women and underrepresented minorities to physics PhD programs and increase the PhD completion rates of these groups. This innovative project will, for the first time, investigate how physics faculty approach admissions and student retention. Evaluation data from this project will allow the design of training materials to help faculty use more inclusive practices. Because these interventions are likely to be transferrable to different fields and institutions, the project has the potential to revolutionize how STEM graduate admission is carried out and to increase the completion rates of US citizens in STEM PhD programs.This project will address graduate STEM education inclusion at both the admission and retention phases. To address access, the project will investigate faculty attitudes and admission measures. Physics faculty attitudes toward diversity, merit, and non-cognitive constructs will be assessed as a measure of change readiness. Participating faculty will then be trained in holistic admissions, a method that is proven to increase diversity in graduate education. The project will develop and validate a non-cognitive assessment tool as part of the holistic admissions packet. To address retention, faculty will be trained on evidence-based support structures that can help new graduate students manage the difficult first years of graduate school. Experimental faculty-centered workshops on admissions and retention will be developed and delivered by the project to four partnering programs at three universities (Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Central Florida, and University of Denver) and then at national meetings hosted by the APS. Formative assessments of these workshops throughout the grant period will be used to revise and refine the materials, resulting in an Admissions and Retention Faculty Training Program that may be used by departments across the country. The APS will curate the resulting materials and help facilitate training during and after project completion, ensuring wide dissemination and sustainable impact of proven practices.The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new, potentially transformative models for STEM graduate education training. The Innovations in Graduate Education Track is dedicated solely to piloting, testing, and evaluating novel, innovative, and potentially transformative approaches to graduate education.