Strategies: Leveraging the U.S. Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) Program to Develop a Regional STEM Workforce

该项目将推进“面向学生和教师的创新技术体验”（ITEST）计划的工作，通过参与实地实践、实验室/项目创业任务和指导经验，更好地理解和促进提高学生在科学、技术、工程或数学（STEM）领域追求职业的动机和能力的实践。莫比尔县公立学校系统（MCPSS）与STEMWorks有限责任公司和南密西西比大学（USM）合作，将利用两个现有项目-当地初级预备役军官训练团（JROTC）和劳动力发展组织，以提高9-11年级学生追求STEM职业的兴趣和能力。该项目的主要干预措施将是为期一周的暑期住宿学院，学生们将参加体能训练、JROTC活动、实地考察和STEM项目。该项目的一个主要目标是研究参加JROTC STEM领导学院的短期和长期影响。另一个目标是正式确立以jrotc为中心的STEM劳动力发展暑期学院模式，该模式可以在地区和美国各地复制。该项目将使用社会认知职业理论（SCCT）作为框架来研究参加JROTC STEM领导学院的影响，该框架将用于组织和测量不同因素对学生选择的相对影响。该项目将采用混合方法比较组设计，调查在传统的JROTC夏季领导和健身营中战略性地定位STEM学习和劳动力经验的影响，以增加STEM管道中的高中生数量。该研究包括Brinkerhoff的成功案例方法，对选择STEM路径的学生进行抽样，深入讲述学生在干预之前、期间和之后的经历，以确定导致选择STEM路径的内部和环境支持。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by engaging in hands-on field experience, laboratory/project-based entrepreneurship tasks and mentorship experiences. The Mobile County Public School System (MCPSS), in partnership with STEMWorks, LLC and the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), will leverage two existing programs- a local Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) and a workforce development organization to increase the interest and competency of grade 9-11 students in pursuing STEM careers. The project's main intervention will be a one-week long summer residential academy where cohorts of students engage in physical conditioning, JROTC activities, site visits, and STEM projects. A major goal of the project is to study the short-term and long-term effects of participation in the JROTC STEM Leadership Academy. Another goal is to formalize a JROTC-centered STEM workforce development summer academy model that can be replicated regionally and across the United States. The project will study the effects of participation in the JROTC STEM Leadership Academy using Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) as a framework that will be applied to organize and measure the relative effect of different factors on student choice. The project will utilize a mixed methods comparison group design to investigate the effects of strategically situating STEM learning and workforce experiences within a traditional JROTC summer leadership and fitness camp in order to increase the number of high school students in the STEM pipeline. The research includes Brinkerhoff's Success Case Method, sampling a subset of students who chose a STEM trajectory to develop in-depth stories of the student's experiences before, during and after the intervention in order to identify the internal and environmental support that lead to choosing a STEM pathway.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.