GSE/RES Advancing Women in STEM: Building Engagement through Later Academic and Work Transitions

Intellectual Merit: This project builds on a previously funding NSF award (0733918) to further test a new theoretical model, the Academic and Social Engagement (ASE) Model, that highlights two psychosocial factors that contribute to women's STEM engagement at different phases during the progression through STEM education and career development: 1) developing and integrating a STEM identity into one's self-concept, and 2) identifying and using social, academic, workplace, and psychological coping resources that provide information, tangible assistance, and social support to facilitate engagement despite impediments. There are at least five critical phases en route to the STEM profession: 1) beginning of undergraduate STEM education; 2) advanced undergraduate STEM education; 3) entry into STEM graduate education and the STEM workforce; 4) master's and doctoral level STEM education and training; and 5) movement into the advanced STEM workforce. Using daily, weekly, and cross-sectional surveys with 400+ STEM undergraduates to date, the ASE model has been tested in the two early phases and consistent with the model, has generated compelling evidence for the importance of these two key factors in fostering STEM engagement. This second stage project will examine the later phases in the transition to a STEM career. Using experience sampling methods (ESM) comprising survey instruments administered daily, weekly, bi-monthly, and cross-sectionally, the proposed project will include two groups of participants: students in the previous project as they progress into the next phases of STEM career attainment (entry into STEM graduate education and/or workforce), and new cohorts of incoming graduate students as they enter STEM graduate education, master's and doctoral level STEM education and training, and move into the advanced STEM workforce. Using daily, weekly, and bi-monthly diaries at targeted points of stress and challenge at each phase (e.g., during comprehensive examinations, dissertation preparation), the research will examine whether identity integration and coping resources predict greater STEM engagement despite the presence of impeding factors for STEM women and comparison groups of STEM men. Broader Impacts: Results from this project may be used as an empirical foundation for the development of interventions that target identity integration and coping resources to promote the engagement, success, and retention of women in STEM fields at multiple levels of training and work. The project team includes a diverse group of predominantly female graduate and undergraduate students from ethnic groups underrepresented in science who will be mentored in research relevant to psychology, gender studies, and related disciplines. Findings will be communicated in professional journals and at conferences that reach scholars in education, gender studies, developmental, health, and social psychology as well as college administrators, academic counselors, STEM scholars, and high school teachers. Dissemination will also be through an existing project website and in widely distributed news sources.