Collaborative Proposal: Taking the long view: Investigating the role of biology interest and far-sighted career goals on students' persistence in STEM career pathways

美国正在进行许多努力，以满足科学和技术劳动力的需求。尽管学生进入大学时对STEM领域感兴趣，但许多人并不坚持这些专业。这个项目将调查两个可能限制学生参与的基本但未被充分研究的因素，包括那些来自生物职业生涯中代表性不足的群体的学生：学生对他们正在追求的学科的兴趣的强度，以及他们整个学习过程中职业目标的清晰度。这项建议通过记录目前在两所大学攻读本科生物专业的兴趣范围和职业目标，并调查这些因素是否可以预测学生在本科生涯中追求的关键经历，为研究这两个因素对大学后准备的影响奠定了基础。没有明确的职业目标和兴趣的学生可能不会认识到在他们的本科生涯中追求哪些经验是重要的，可能会在不同的有益经验中进行选择，或者可能在事情变得困难时没有动力坚持下去。这个项目还将加深我们对早期学生如何在大学期间培养这些目标和兴趣以变得具有竞争力的理解。这些发现将为设计和部署有效的干预措施提供信息，以帮助学生在失去获得关键经验的机会之前制定职业目标和更强烈的纪律兴趣。本项目的智力价值在于首次引入了兴趣发展理论和职业发展理论来表征生物兴趣和职业目标在促进学生在生物职业道路上进步的作用。对医学和生物专业研究生的回溯性访谈将描述学生兴趣和职业目标发展与他们在本科职业生涯中追求关键学科经验之间的时间和关系。对具有不同生物兴趣水平和不同职业目标发展阶段的生物专业新生进行的大样本纵向研究，将通过跟踪学生在大学头三年获得关键学科经验的时间来补充这一分析。总之，这些研究将为以下问题提供证据：1)进入医学院和研究生院的学生获得关键经验的时间有多早，频率有多高；2)学科兴趣和职业目标发展是否会影响对关键经验的追求和生物职业目标的维持；3)来自历史上服务不足的群体的学生进入大学的可能性是否较低，他们的生物学兴趣和/或职业目标已经发展。此外，该项目还将加深人们对生物学职业道路的重要性的理解，将其作为衡量持久力的传统指标：在生物学专业留存。

Many efforts are underway to meet the science and technology workforce needs in the United States. Although students enter college with interests in STEM fields, many do not persist in these majors. This project will investigate two fundamental, yet understudied factors that may limit participation of students, including those from underrepresented groups in biology careers: the strength of students' interest in the discipline they are pursuing and the clarity of their career goals throughout their studies. This proposal lays the groundwork for investigating the influence of these two factors on post-college preparedness by documenting the current range of interest and career goals in entering undergraduate biology majors at two institutions and investigating whether these factors predict the critical experiences students pursue during their undergraduate career. Students without clear career goals and interests may not recognize which experiences are important to pursue during their undergraduate career, may have trouble choosing among different beneficial experiences, or may not be motivated to persist when things get difficult. This project will also advance our understanding about how early students need to develop these goals and interests to become competitive during college. These findings will inform the design and deployment of effective interventions to help students develop career goals and stronger disciplinary interests before they lose opportunities to access critical experiences. The intellectual merit of this project is to bring interest development theory and, for the first time, vocational development theory to characterize the roles of biology interest and career goal clarity in advancing students' progress in biology career paths. Retrospective interviews with medical and graduate students in biology will characterize the timing of and relationships between students' interest and career goal development and their pursuit of critical disciplinary experiences during their undergraduate career. A longitudinal study of a large sample of entering biology majors with different levels of biology interest and at different stages of career goal development will complement this analysis by tracking when students acquire critical disciplinary experiences over the first three years of college. Together, these studies will provide evidence on 1) how early and how often students who matriculate to medical and graduate school access critical experiences, 2) whether disciplinary interest and career goal development impact pursuit of critical experiences and maintenance of biology career goals, and 3) whether students from historically underserved groups are less likely to enter college with developed biology interests and/or career goals. In addition, the project will increase understanding the importance of biology career pathways as an alternative to the traditional measure of persistence: retention in the biology major.