Collaborative Research:Community College Roots of STEM:Interactive Influences of Individual, Secondary School, & College Factors Predicting the Success of Underrepresented Gro

尽管对技术和科学素养的美国劳动力的需求不断增长，但女性和少数种族/族裔群体的成员在STEM职业中仍然代表不足。围绕这一现象的知识基础的一个主要差距是对许多代表性不足的学生在进行STEM教育和职业选择时所采取的不同途径的理解。例如，妇女和代表性不足的少数民族不成比例地可能在社区学院注册，最初的目的是转到四年制机构。拟议的研究将通过调查通过社区学院到四年制机构的途径如何有助于那些获得STEM学位的人的性别和种族不平等的根源，来解决当前研究基础中的差距。这项研究将明确审查的个人特点和教育经验的学生谁开始了他们的中学后教育在社区学院。具体而言，这项多阶段研究将调查与白色男性相比，导致女性和代表性不足的少数民族完成STEM专业的可能性较低的结构和个人因素。该项目的定量部分将把社区大学学生的数据整合到现有的数据集（Roots 8-16数据集）中。这个当前的数据集将北卡罗来纳州公立学校八年级学生的行政记录链接到美国大学系统的十六个校区之一。本项目将增加从社区大学转入四年制大学的学生的行政记录，从而使样本多样化，同时加强从中得出的结论。本项目的这一部分重点关注初中和高中数学和科学学习的结构性机会和限制，以及它们对以后教育轨迹的影响。研究人员将研究学习的障碍和机会，以确定是否有不同的影响，学生从不同的背景。研究的定性部分包括一系列的采访，与社区大学的学生谁表示愿意转移到一个四年制大学和专业的STEM兴趣。学生将在项目的第一年接受采访，三年后再次接受采访，以检查他们的经验，并进一步探讨定量研究的结果，包括：对过渡到四年制大学的影响，以及女性STEM专业如何应对社会结构的限制和机会。

Despite growing demands for a technically and scientifically literate US labor force, women and members of racial/ethnic minority groups remain underrepresented in STEM careers. A major gap in the knowledge base around this phenomenon is an understanding of the different pathways that many underrepresented students take when making STEM education and career choices. For example, women and underrepresented minorities are disproportionately likely to enroll in a community college initially with the intent of transferring to a four-year institution. The proposed research will address the gap in the current research base by investigating how pathways through community colleges to four-year institutions contribute to the roots of gender and racial inequalities in those who earn STEM degrees. The study will explicitly examine the individual characteristics and educational experiences of students who started their post-secondary education in community colleges. Specifically, this multi-phased study will investigate the structural and individual factors that contribute to women and underrepresented minorities' lower probability of completing a STEM major, compared to White men. The quantitative portion of the project will integrate data on community college students into an existing dataset (Roots 8-16 dataset). This current dataset links administrative records on students from the public schools of North Carolina from eighth grade into one of the sixteen campuses of the UNC university system. This project will add administrative records on students who transfer from community colleges into the four-year university system, thus diversifying the sample while strengthening the conclusions that may be drawn from it. This portion of the project focuses on the structural opportunities and constraints to math and science learning in middle and high school and their impact on later educational trajectories. Researchers will examine the barriers and opportunities to learning to determine whether there are differential impacts on students from various backgrounds.The qualitative portion of the study consists of a series of interviews with community college students who have indicated a desire to transfer to a four-year university and an interest in majoring in STEM. Students will be interviewed the first year of the project and again three years later to examine their experiences and to further probe the findings from the quantitative study, including: influences on making the transition to four-year colleges and how female STEM majors navigate social structural constraints and opportunities.