Fostering Belonging, Competency, Leadership at an All-Women’s College: the Marie Curie III Scholarship Program

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This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at the College of Saint Mary in Omaha, NE. The College of Saint Mary is a private all-women’s university dedicated to helping women realize their potential and self-worth, identify leadership strengths, and find fulfillment in careers and lives. Over its six-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to 24 unique fulltime students who are pursuing bachelor’s degrees in Biology, Chemistry, or Mathematics. Each first-year student selected as a Marie Curie Scholar will receive a 4-year scholarship. Throughout the course of their studies, research will be conducted to examine the extent to which participation in each of the program’s components impacts students’ perception of their own belonging in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), self-assessment of their own science and mathematic competency, and confidence in their ability to pursue and persist in STEM careers. This project will provide an intentional four-year plan for each cohort of Scholars that will help prepare students for success in STEM courses, inspire them to explore different careers in STEM fields, provide research and/or work experience with faculty and industry partners, and aid the Scholars with job and/or graduate school placement. Data on Marie Curie Scholars will be compared across Scholar and non-Scholar cohorts. This project will advance knowledge and understanding of the educational experiences of women in relationship to (1) practices using an integrated STEM curriculum, research, and co-curricular design specific to cohort-based learning and (2) highly engaged and authentic STEM career and graduate-school exploration activities with an emphasis on communal opportunities and goal orientation.The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. Specifically, this project will assess the extent to which participation in STEM experiences, training, and exposure to STEM careers affects the retention of female undergraduate students pursing bachelor’s degree in Biology, Chemistry, or Mathematics as well as changes in their communal and agentic goal orientations and STEM career goal affordances. According to role congruity theory, women (and men) form gender-role congruent goals, which leads to gender differences in career interests. Women endorse communal more than agentic goals. This results in a gender gap in STEM fields as such careers are typically viewed as affording agentic rather than communal goals. The researchers plan to examine these relationships both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. This project will examine the following research questions: (1) Are experience and training in STEM related to communal and agentic goal orientations and perceptions of STEM career goal affordances? (2) Are experience and training in STEM related to change over time in perceptions of the extent to which STEM careers are perceived as affording communal and agentic goals? (3) Are experience and training in STEM related to greater belonging/fit in STEM? (4) Do experience and training in STEM, communal and agentic goal orientations, and perceptions of STEM goal affordances predict greater perceived belonging and interest in STEM? The project will provide participants with an intentional four-year plan that will provide additional academic support, expose students to a variety of STEM professions, develop a network of local STEM professionals, provide training and research experiences, secure internships, and assist in job placement or continued STEM education. Project researchers will assess the extent to which participation in each of these experiences affects students’ perception of STEM fit, goal orientation, and career affordances. The results of this study will also advance understanding of programming’s impact on retention, graduation rates, achieved academic/career placement, and perception of career fit and goal orientation in non-medical STEM careers. The outcomes of this project will be published in peer-review journals and disseminated through research presentations at regional and national STEM and psychology conferences. Advances from evaluative and research efforts will be disseminated widely to improve undergraduate STEM education for women and contribute to the development of a diverse, competitive STEM workforce. This project is funded by NSF’s Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, which seeks to increase the number of low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need who earn degrees in STEM fields. It also aims to improve the education of future STEM workers, and to generate knowledge about academic success, retention, transfer, graduation, and academic/career pathways of low-income students.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.