Investigating Challenges to Matriculation and Completion for Underrepresented STEM Graduate Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Effective Years: 2020-2021

This RAPID project aims to empirically examine obstacles to the matriculation, persistence, and completion of underrepresented minority (URM) students in STEM graduate programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The underlying assumptions of the project are that URMs may experience greater economic hardship and erosion in motivation to complete a graduate degree during crises. To address this problem, the Council of Graduate Schools will collaborate with the Council for Opportunity in Education and the Council of Historically Black Graduate Schools to collect and analyze data to document the critical decision points for URM students and establish baseline information about their graduate school aspirations and attitudes toward completion during the pandemic. The project will produce results that can inform graduate student advising and support structures to address the current challenges and guide interventions to broaden participation in STEM graduate education.

The investigators will investigate four research questions: (1) What are the obstacles to the matriculation of underrepresented graduate students in the Fall 2020? (2) What are the obstacles to the retention of underrepresented students currently enrolled in STEM graduate programs? (3) What are the challenges for sustaining graduate school aspirations among URM rising college seniors following the COVID-19 pandemic? and (4) In an environment where experiential learning experiences have been disrupted by the pandemic, what strategies are being used to prepare URMs for graduate school success? Quantitative and qualitative data will be collected from undergraduate pipeline program directors, graduate deans, and other key stakeholders through surveys and focus groups. Data will be analyzed using both simple descriptive and multivariate regression techniques, and the results will be shared broadly with the graduate education community.

This project is funded by the Building Capacity in STEM Education Research competition of the EHR Core Research program. ECR supports fundamental STEM education research that addresses issues relevant to STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM professional workforce development,

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.