Consistent with national trends, only about ½ of students who intend to major in STEM disciplines at Maryville College (MC) complete bachelor’s degrees in these fields. The Scots Science Scholars (S3) program was funded through the National Science Foundation’s STEM Talent Extension Program to increase the number of students graduating with STEM degrees from MC. The S3 program enrolls college freshmen who have an interest in STEM majors and math ACT scores between 21 and 27, with emphasis on students from groups underrepresented in STEM and first-generation college students. The program consists of a summer bridge, a living-learning community, early engagement in STEM research, a seminar series that exposes students to STEM careers and research fields, academic support through a first-year seminar class, peer tutoring, and time-management counseling. The program has enrolled 6 cohorts of students (n = 97) since 2013, (54% female, 22% underrepresented minorities and 35% first-generation college students). From 2013-2017, S3 compared favorably to the general college population: 96% of all S3 completed the first year of college, 69% declared STEM majors, and 85% returned to the college for a second year (compared to 71%, p < 0.001). Overall, S 3 students persist at the college longer than non-S3 students (P<0.01). Compared to a matched control group, S 3 had significantly higher STEM major declaration rates (68% vs. 38%), higher rates of STEM retention through the junior year (41% vs. 20%), and improved overall college persistence (P< 0.01). Students report high levels of satisfaction with the summer program. At the end of the summer program, students report gains in skills and attitudes that are important for success in STEM. They also perform significantly better on math and chemistry assessments after completing the program. College-wide, the number of students enrolled in STEM majors at Maryville has increased by 52% since the inception of S3 , and STEM undergraduate research productivity has increased markedly. Our data suggest the S3 program is an important component of institutional changes that are increasing the STEM population and building a robust and productive STEM culture at a liberal arts college.
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Changing demographics of scientific careers: The rise of the temporary workforce
Contemporary science has been characterized by an exponential growth in publications and a rise of team science. At the same time, there has been an increase in the number of awarded PhD degrees, which has not been accompanied by a similar expansion in the number of academic positions. In such a competitive environment, an important measure of academic success is the ability to maintain a long active career in science. In this paper, we study workforce trends in three scientific disciplines over half a century. We find dramatic shortening of careers of scientists across all three disciplines. The time over which half of the cohort has left the field has shortened from 35 y in the 1960s to only 5 y in the 2010s. In addition, we find a rapid rise (from 25 to 60% since the 1960s) of a group of scientists who spend their entire career only as supporting authors without having led a publication. Altogether, the fraction of entering researchers who achieve full careers has diminished, while the class of temporary scientists has escalated. We provide an interpretation of our empirical results in terms of a survival model from which we infer potential factors of success in scientific career survivability. Cohort attrition can be successfully modeled by a relatively simple hazard probability function. Although we find statistically significant trends between survivability and an author’s early productivity, neither productivity nor the citation impact of early work or the level of initial collaboration can serve as a reliable predictor of ultimate survivability.
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 1636636
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10081223
- Publisher / Repository:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Volume:
- 115
- Issue:
- 50
- ISSN:
- 0027-8424
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 12616-12623
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Societal Impact Statement Humans are dependent upon plants for oxygen, food, textiles, and medicines. Climate change and deforestation represent serious threats to our planet, causing significant disruptions to our ability to access and utilize these plant resources; this makes a botanically literate workforce and plant science careers more important than ever. Unfortunately, the current state of botanical career opportunities and training programs in the United States remains unclear. This study focuses on the current employment trends of government and private sector botanists and what skills future plant scientists will need to be successful in these careers.
Summary Plant science plays a crucial role in our society and in ongoing efforts to address many global challenges, including food insecurity and climate change. Yet, despite a predicted increase in plant science career opportunities in the United States, the botanical career landscape outside of academia is not well understood.
To further our understanding of the training required for non‐academic botanical careers, the botanical sub‐disciplines used on the job, and career challenges faced by plant scientists, we surveyed 61 scientists working in government and 59 scientists working in the private sector in the United States.
In both career sectors, > 80% of survey participants reported recent hires at the bachelor's degree level. New personnel with master's degrees were more commonly reported in the government sector (95%) than in the private sector (69%). Most plant scientists working in government reported a focus on plant ecology and resource management. By contrast, most industry/non‐profit work involved horticulture and biotechnology, with some specific skills spanning both sectors. Notably, one prediction made nearly a decade ago appears to be manifesting: plant scientists seem to be retiring more quickly than they are being replaced. Survey respondents reported that attempts to hire full‐time staff are met with obstacles, including insufficient funding. Plant science professionals in both career sectors emphasized their routine use of botanical skills developed as students, highlighting the need for effective training at the undergraduate level.
We discuss the implications of these findings and present several recommendations for preparing future generations of plant scientists and increasing the scientific community's botanical capacity.
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null (Ed.)Entrepreneurial education has been rapidly expanding within universities over the past 15 years with colleges of engineering being amongst the most active participants in embedding entrepreneurship into curricular and cocurricular activities (Pittaway & Cope, 2007). Well-developed and theoretically grounded educational interventions have been shown to increase entrepreneurial skills and perception among students. (Pittaway & Cope, 2007; Matlay & Caray, 2007; Duval-Couetil & Wheadon, 2013; Duval-Couetil & Rheed-Roads, 2012). Organizations including the National Science Foundation through the Lean Launch Curriculum and I-Corps program, VentureWell through curriculum development grants and their E-Team program, and the Kern Family Foundation through the Kern Entrepreneurial Education Network (KEEN) have provided significant funding to embed and transform entrepreneurial teaching and practice into colleges of engineering (Matthew et al., 2017; Pistrui, Blessing & Mekemson, 2008; Smith et al. 2017). This activity combines with an added emphasis among engineering programs to develop an entrepreneurial mindset among their engineering students with the belief that this will lead to them being more productive and innovative whether their career path leads them into established industry (becoming “intrapreneurs”) or later as entrepreneurs. While this trend toward developing more entrepreneurially minded engineering students is supported by global economic trends and a rapidly changing work environment, one factor has been largely overlooked in this process. Statistically, most entrepreneurial ventures fail, with disproportionately large value being created from a minority of entrepreneurial endeavors (Coats, 2019). Given this fact, until we find ways to drastically increase the success rate of entrepreneurial ventures, as we increase engineering students’ exposure to entrepreneurship, we are also increasing their exposure to failure very early in their careers. With this exposure, it is unknown whether sufficient preparation and education around project/venture failure is occurring to properly equip entrepreneurially minded engineering students to learn and grow from entrepreneurial failure. In this work in progress study, current and former engineering students who formed entrepreneurial ventures and experienced either failure of the venture or significant failure during the venture are interviewed to better understand the influences that led to both adaptive and maladaptive responses to these failures. Participants have been selected from those that have received funding through the national VentureWell E-Team program. This program awards three levels of funding and provides mentorship, training, and networking for the teams. The study uses the framework developed by Henry, Shorter, Charkoudian, Heemstra, and Corwin (2018) in which they associate pre-failure dispositions related to fixed and growth mindset (Dweck, 2000, 2006) and mastery vs. performance disposition (Pintrich, 2000 a, b). Our work will utilize this framework to guide the research, but more importantly will provide a unique context for analysis, specifically within engineering entrepreneurship, which will add to the body of work and expand the understanding of this pre-failure/post-failure disposition framework. Initial interview data and analysis will be presented in the context of this framework with preliminary insights to be shared with those in the field.more » « less
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Historically, the goal of graduate education has been to prepare future academics, and it has thus focused on the creation and conservation of disciplinary knowledge. However, today’s reality is that many engineering graduate students (GSs) go on to non-academic careers. As educators, it should be our aim to equip GSs for success, regardless of career aspirations. It is therefore essential that we shift our focus towards preparing a new type of scholar – one with a strong professional identity – rather than preparing a person for a specific type of career. We argue that helping students cultivate a professional identity has been largely missing from engineering graduate education. Connecting ideas across disciplines and applying abstract knowledge to real problems—as one does when teaching—is a necessity for the development of a strong professional identity. It is hence the integration of knowledge transformation (teaching) into graduate engineering education that led us to create the Graduate Identity Formation through Teaching (GIFT) project. In GIFT, engineering GSs are supported to construct adult-level, inquiry-based, 30-minute lessons based on specific K–6 Next Generation Science Standards. The GSs serve as disciplinary experts by teaching their lesson to elementary teacher candidates (TCs) who are enrolled in an Elementary Science Methods course. The TCs then turn this knowledge into 15-minute mini-lessons for elementary students with input and feedback from the GSs. Finally, the GSs observe the TCs teaching the lesson to K–6 students and reflect on the entire experience. To support the work that the GS do and account for the time they spend on the project, they also enroll in a 1-credit graduate course about teaching and learning which is open to graduate students from all disciplines. We will present results from five semesters of GIFT showing that project participation (1) promotes the development of GS professional identity, (2) reduces impostor feelings, (3) leads to changes in attitudes about K–12 educators, and (4) improves GSs’ skills in communicating with a variety of audiences. In the future, these results can be extrapolated to support engineering GSs in terms of their current educational activities and their future careers.more » « less
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This theory paper describes the development and use of a framework for supporting early career faculty development, especially in competitive National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER proposals. Engineering Education Research (EER) has developed into a field of expertise and a career pathway over the past three decades. In response to numerous reports in the 1990s and early 2000s, multiple EER graduate programs were established in the mid-2000s and a growing number continue to emerge to educate and train the next generation of EER faculty and policy makers. Historically, many came to EER as individuals trained in other disciplines, but with an interest in improving teaching and learning. This approach created an interdisciplinary space where many could learn the norms, practices, and language of EER, as they became scholars. This history combined with the emergence of EER as a discipline with academic recognition; specific knowledge, frameworks, methodologies, and ways of conducting research; and particular emphasis and goals, creates a tension for building capacity to continue to develop EER and also include engineering education researchers who have not completed PhDs in an engineering education program. If EER is to continue to develop and emerge as a strong and robust discipline with high quality engineering education research, support mechanisms must be developed to both recognize outstanding EER scholars and develop the next generation of researchers in the field. The Five I’s framework comes from a larger project on supporting early career EER faculty in developing NSF CAREER proposals. Arguably, a NSF CAREER award is significant external recognition of EER that signals central membership in the community. The Five I’s were developed using collaborative inquiry, a tool and process to inform practice, with 19 EER CAREER awardees during a retreat in March 2019. The Five I’s include: Ideas, Integration, Impact, Identity, and Infrastructure. Ideas is researchers’ innovative and potentially transformative ideas that can make a significant contribution to EER. All NSF proposals are evaluated using the criteria of intellectual merit and broader impacts, and ideas aligned with these goals are essential for funding success. The integration of research and education is a specific additional consideration of CAREER proposals. Both education and research must inform one another in the proposal process. Demonstrating the impact of research is essential to convey why research should be funded. This impact is essential to address as it directly relates to the NSF criteria of broader impacts as well as why an individual is positioned to carry out that impact. This positioning is tied to identity or the particular research expertise from which a faculty member will be a leader in the field. Finally, infrastructure includes the people and physical resources from which a faculty member must draw to be successful. This framework has proven useful in helping early career faculty evaluate their readiness to apply for an NSF CAREER award or highlight the particular areas of their development that could be improved for future success.more » « less
