Progress and Pitfalls in Monitoring STEM Doctoral Degree Holders Career Paths

芝加哥大学国家民意研究中心(NORC)将举办一次2019年春季会议和相关准备任务，重点讨论授予博士学位的大学及其博士项目如何收集和利用STEM博士职业生涯的数据。该项目的总体目标是帮助制定广泛共享的标准，包括应该衡量的职业结果类型；收集数据的方法；以及应该如何分析数据并将结果传播给未来的学生、教职员工和管理人员。资金将用于支持四项主要活动：2018年秋季基于网络的全国研究生院长调查，2018年12月研究生院长焦点小组，2019年5月或6月为期一天半的会议，以及多管齐下传播项目成果。一项针对研究生院的拟议调查将是在全国范围内、跨机构和研究生项目班级收集数据的第一次系统性努力，目的是收集正在实施的各种方法的数据，以考虑它们的运作情况。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，最近一批博士获得者遵循这些知识，使研究生能够做出更明智的职业选择。拟议的讲习班将汇集高等教育机构的代表，他们一直在制定不同的方法来研究STEM领域的博士获得者的职业道路，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在跟踪STEM职业方面的挑战和成就方面吸取的经验教训，制定缓解挑战的战略，并对职业途径数据收集和利用方面的问题产生基于经验的理解。项目小组将分两步收集来自大约270个机构的定量和定性数据，这些机构目前正在参与职业道路项目，已经以公开形式提供了博士毕业生职业成果的信息，或者没有参与这一主题。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生涯数据收集过程的障碍，并举行焦点小组展示调查结果。该项目最后将举行会议并散发一本专著，该专著将为大学在职业道路、数据收集和利用方面提供见解和指导。该项目由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NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.