Effects of Research and Mentoring on Underrepresented Youths’ STEM Persistence Into College

Background: Authentic research experiences and mentoring have positive impacts on fostering STEM engagement among youth from backgrounds underrepresented in STEM. Programs applying an experiential learning approach often incorporate one or both of these elements, however, there is little research on how these factors impact youth's STEM engagement during the high school to college transition. Purpose: Using a longitudinal design, this study explored the impact of a hands-on field research experience and mentoring as unique factors impacting STEM-related outcomes among underrepresented youth. We focus on the high school to college transition, a period that can present new barriers to STEM persistence. Methodology/Approach: We surveyed 189 youth before and up to 3 years after participation in a 7-week intensive summer intervention. Findings/Conclusions: Authentic research experiences was related to increased youths’ science interest and pursuit of STEM majors, even after their transition to college. Mentorship had a more indirect impact on STEM academic intentions; where positive mentorship experiences was related to youths’ reports of social connection. Implications: Programs designed for continuing STEM engagement of underrepresented youth would benefit from incorporating experiential learning approaches focused on authentic research experiences.

Exploring Factors that Predict STEM Persistence at a Large, Public Research University

The present study explores demographics, pre-college characteristics and multi-year (2003-2013) tracking of a census of 53,077 students who initially declared a STEM major upon entering a research university in Texas and seeks to predict graduation with a STEM and non-STEM degree. Guided by QuantCrit theory, we use multilevel models to determine factors that predicted persistence in any major and factors that predicted persistence in STEM, as well as use marginal effects to explore the intersection of ethnicity, sex, and first-generation status. Results highlight the disparity that exist amongst Black students and their White counterparts with regards to persistence in any major. We also highlight the gap between first-generation White and Black first-generation females and their Asian and International counterparts with regards to persistence in STEM. Implications for future research and practitioners suggest further attention needs to be paid to Black first-generation students.

A psychological intervention strengthens students’ peer social networks and promotes persistence in STEM

Retaining students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields is critical as demand for STEM graduates increases. Whereas many approaches to improve persistence target individuals’ internal beliefs, skills, and traits, the intervention in this experiment strengthened students’ peer social networks to help them persevere. Students in a gateway biology course were randomly assigned to complete a control or values affirmation exercise, a psychological intervention hypothesized to have positive social effects. By the end of the term, affirmed students had an estimated 29% more friends in the course on average than controls. Affirmation also prompted structural changes in students’ network positions such that affirmed students were more central in the overall course friendship network. These differing social trajectories predicted STEM persistence: Affirmed students were 11.7 percentage points more likely than controls to take the next course in the bioscience sequence, an effect that was statistically mediated by students’ end-of-semester friendships.

Men’s Overpersistence and the Gender Gap in Science and Mathematics

Large and long-standing gaps exist in the gender composition of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Abundant research has sought to explain these gaps, typically focusing on women, though these gaps result from the decisions of men as well as women. Here we study gender differences in STEM persistence with a focus on men’s choices, finding that men persist in these domains even where opting out could lead to greater material payoffs. Study 1 employed a novel experimental paradigm for measuring “overpersistence,” finding that undergraduate men chose mathematics questions over verbal questions at higher rates than undergraduate women on a test in which mathematics questions were substantially more difficult than verbal questions and participants were paid for correct answers. Study 2 analyzed data from a nationally representative longitudinal survey, finding that men are more likely than women to retake college STEM courses after failing them and that men’s STEM retaking after failure is as likely to lead to lower later life earnings as to higher earnings. Finally, in Study 3, we used a survey-embedded experiment to examine the intervening factors driving men’s overpersistence in a diverse sample of adults. Integrating prior theoretical work, we find evidence for a model in which cultural stereotypes of male superiority in mathematics lead men both to be more confident in and identify more with the mathematics domain, factors that in turn lead men to pursue math to a greater extent than women.