Building Capacity to Support Career Acceleration and STEM Workforce Development

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This project aims to serve the national interest by creating and then assessing the impact of a workshop series designed to engage students from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups to consider entering the corporate world. The goal is to build the capacity of the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) to advance knowledge related to broadening participation and STEM workforce development. NACME is the largest provider of scholarships for college students from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups pursuing undergraduate engineering degrees. Through collaborations with partner institutions and corporate supporters across the country, NACME also provides students with other resources and professional development opportunities. Leveraging the NACME infrastructure, the project team will first develop a workshop series envisioned to better prepare students of color (e.g., African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans) to enter the corporate world. An internship will also be part of the activities. Concurrent with the operation of the series the project team will collect information from participants that can help companies improve student internship experiences. The workshop series will begin before students report to their internship assignments and participating interns will be introduced to coping techniques for navigating corporate environments, including potentially hostile workspaces.This project will engage an interdisciplinary team of STEM educators, social scientists, industry professionals, and event planners. The proposed activities will be grounded in Career Construction Theory (CCT). CCT is primarily used within career counseling spaces to help people cultivate and apply their vocational self-concept. The specific part of CCT that the research team will use is Career Adaptability Resources and Adapting Responses, which will represent the manner in which each intern is able to cope with workplace challenges and responsibilities. Over the course of the project, the research team will use a two-phase strategy to aid corporate sponsors with offering high-quality internship experiences. Phase 1 will focus on developing, delivering, and evaluating the professional development workshop that is central to this project. Phase 2 will focus on collecting and analyzing additional information about the internship experience from the perspective of the undergraduate students. The overarching goals are to (1) monitor students' development of adaptability resources, vocational identities, and organizational commitment during the internship period; (2) study how interventions offered by NACME impact the internship experience; and (3) identify areas of opportunities for corporate partners to improve the internship experience. These goals will be achieved through a pre-test, post-test quasi-experimental design, followed by in-depth interviews, that are intentionally integrated with the evaluation plan. The intellectual merit of the project lies in its potential to contribute to foundational knowledge related to providing inclusive and welcoming workspaces as students transition from academic settings to internships at technical companies. This project is funded by the NSF IUSE: EHR Program which supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through its Engaged Student Learning track, the IUSE program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.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.