Collaborative Proposal: Taking the long view: Investigating the role of biology interest and far-sighted career goals on students' persistence in STEM career pathways

许多努力正在进行，以满足美国对科技劳动力的需求。虽然学生进入大学时对STEM领域感兴趣，但许多人并没有坚持这些专业。该项目将调查两个基本的、尚未被充分研究的因素，这些因素可能会限制学生的参与，包括那些来自生物学职业中代表性不足的群体的学生：学生对他们所追求的学科的兴趣程度，以及他们在整个学习过程中职业目标的清晰度。本研究通过对两所院校本科生物专业学生的兴趣范围和职业目标进行记录，并调查这些因素是否能预测学生在本科职业生涯中所追求的关键经历，为研究这两个因素对大学毕业后准备的影响奠定基础。没有明确职业目标和兴趣的学生可能不知道在本科生涯中哪些经历是重要的，可能在选择不同的有益经历时遇到困难，或者在遇到困难时没有动力坚持下去。这个项目也将促进我们对早期学生如何培养这些目标和兴趣以在大学期间变得有竞争力的理解。这些发现将为设计和部署有效的干预措施提供信息，以帮助学生在失去获得关键经验的机会之前发展职业目标和更强的学科兴趣。本课题的智力价值在于引入兴趣发展理论，并首次引入职业发展理论来描述生物学兴趣和职业目标清晰度在促进学生生物学职业发展道路上的作用。对医学和生物学研究生的回顾性访谈将描述学生兴趣和职业目标发展的时间和他们在本科职业生涯中追求关键学科经验之间的关系。通过跟踪学生在大学前三年获得关键学科经验的时间，对具有不同生物学兴趣水平和处于不同职业目标发展阶段的大量生物专业新生样本进行纵向研究，将补充上述分析。总之，这些研究将提供以下证据：1)进入医学院和研究生院的学生获得关键经验的时间和频率；2)学科兴趣和职业目标发展是否影响关键经验的追求和生物学职业目标的维持；3)来自历史上服务不足群体的学生是否更不可能进入具有发达生物学兴趣和/或职业目标的大学。此外，该项目将增加对生物学职业道路的重要性的理解，作为传统的持久性衡量标准：在生物学专业的保留。

Many efforts are underway to meet the science and technology workforce needs in the United States. Although students enter college with interests in STEM fields, many do not persist in these majors. This project will investigate two fundamental, yet understudied factors that may limit participation of students, including those from underrepresented groups in biology careers: the strength of students' interest in the discipline they are pursuing and the clarity of their career goals throughout their studies. This proposal lays the groundwork for investigating the influence of these two factors on post-college preparedness by documenting the current range of interest and career goals in entering undergraduate biology majors at two institutions and investigating whether these factors predict the critical experiences students pursue during their undergraduate career. Students without clear career goals and interests may not recognize which experiences are important to pursue during their undergraduate career, may have trouble choosing among different beneficial experiences, or may not be motivated to persist when things get difficult. This project will also advance our understanding about how early students need to develop these goals and interests to become competitive during college. These findings will inform the design and deployment of effective interventions to help students develop career goals and stronger disciplinary interests before they lose opportunities to access critical experiences. The intellectual merit of this project is to bring interest development theory and, for the first time, vocational development theory to characterize the roles of biology interest and career goal clarity in advancing students' progress in biology career paths. Retrospective interviews with medical and graduate students in biology will characterize the timing of and relationships between students' interest and career goal development and their pursuit of critical disciplinary experiences during their undergraduate career. A longitudinal study of a large sample of entering biology majors with different levels of biology interest and at different stages of career goal development will complement this analysis by tracking when students acquire critical disciplinary experiences over the first three years of college. Together, these studies will provide evidence on 1) how early and how often students who matriculate to medical and graduate school access critical experiences, 2) whether disciplinary interest and career goal development impact pursuit of critical experiences and maintenance of biology career goals, and 3) whether students from historically underserved groups are less likely to enter college with developed biology interests and/or career goals. In addition, the project will increase understanding the importance of biology career pathways as an alternative to the traditional measure of persistence: retention in the biology major.