Progress and Pitfalls in Monitoring STEM Doctoral Degree Holders Career Paths

芝加哥大学国家意见研究中心（NORC）将于2019年春季召开会议，并开展相关准备工作，重点讨论授予博士学位的大学及其博士课程如何收集和利用STEM博士职业道路的数据。该项目的总体目标是帮助制定应衡量的职业成果类型的广泛共享标准；收集数据的方法；以及如何分析数据并将研究结果传播给未来的学生、教师和管理人员。资金将用于支持四项主要活动：2018年秋季对研究生院长进行基于网络的全国调查，2018年12月对研究生院长进行焦点小组调查，2019年5月或6月举行为期一天半的会议，以及多管齐下的项目结果传播。一项针对研究生院的拟议调查将是第一次系统地在全国范围内、跨院校和研究生项目收集数据，了解正在实施的各种方法，以考虑它们是如何工作的。该项目有可能影响学生和大学博士项目负责人可以获得的关于职业道路的知识，以及最近一批博士获得者的职业道路，使研究生能够做出更明智的职业选择。该研讨会将汇集来自高等教育机构的代表，他们一直在开发不同的方法来研究STEM领域的博士学位获得者的职业道路，以及数据收集和利用方面的社会科学专家。会议将使与会者能够交流迄今为止在跟踪STEM职业方面所面临的挑战和取得的成就，制定缓解挑战的策略，并对职业路径数据收集和利用方面的问题产生基于经验的理解。项目团队将采用两步流程，从目前参与职业道路项目、以公开形式提供博士研究生职业成果信息或未参与该主题的约270所机构收集定量和定性数据。在会议之前，他们将进行一项在线调查，以更好地了解开始职业道路数据收集过程的障碍，并举行焦点小组来展示调查结果。该项目最终将召开会议并散发一本专著，为大学提供关于职业道路、数据收集和利用的见解和指导。本项目由STEM专业劳动力发展核心主题下的EHR核心研究计划（NSF 15-509）资助。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。

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago will conduct a spring 2019 conference and related preparatory tasks focused on how doctoral-granting universities and their doctoral programs can collect and utilize data on STEM PhD career pathways. The overarching objective of the project is to help develop widely-shared standards for the kind of career outcomes that should be measured; the methods for collecting the data; and the ways in which data should be analyzed and findings disseminated to prospective students, faculty, and administrators. Funding will be used to support four main activities: a web-based national survey of graduate deans in fall 2018, a focus group of graduate deans in December 2018, a one-and-a-half-day conference in May or June 2019, and a multi-pronged dissemination of results of the project. A proposed survey of graduate schools will be the first systematic effort to collect data nationwide and across classes of institutions and graduate programs on the various approaches being implemented to consider how they are working. The project has potential to influence knowledge that could be available to students and university doctoral program leaders about career paths followed by recent cohorts of doctoral recipients to enable graduate students to make wiser career choices. The proposed workshop will bring together representatives from higher education institutions who have been developing different approaches to studying career pathways of PhD recipients in the STEM fields as well as social science experts in data collection and utilization. The conference will enable participants to exchange lessons learned to date on challenges and accomplishments in tracking STEM careers, develop strategies for mitigating the challenges, and generate an empirically based understanding of issues surrounding career pathway data collection and utilization. The project team will employ a two-step process in collecting quantitative and qualitative data from approximately 270 institutions that currently engage in a career pathways project, have provided information on PhD graduate career outcomes in a public form, or have not engaged this topic. Prior to the conference, they will conduct an online survey to better understand the barriers to beginning a career pathway data collection process and hold focus groups to present the survey findings. The project will culminate with the conference and dissemination of a monograph that will provide insight and guidance for universities on career pathways data collection and utilization. This project is funded by he EHR Core Research Program (NSF 15-509) under the STEM Professional Workforce Development core theme.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.