Effective: 2023-2028

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Yolanda Rankin

Institution: Florida State University

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education, to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization, and to build a foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research. This CAREER project explores the postsecondary experiences of Black women currently enrolled in...

Effective: 2023-2028

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Nicole Pitterson

Institution: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Introductory engineering courses may seem alienating to many undergraduates when fundamental concepts are presented primarily through highly technical language, unfamiliar metaphors and analogies, and complex abstractions. This sense of alienation may be particularly acute when students’ educational backgrounds, prior experiences, and linguistic practices are not reflected in engineering instructors’ written or verbal examples and course materials. To counter this sense, the purpose of this...

Effective: 2023-2028

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Elizabeth Dorrance Hall

Institution: Michigan State University

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education, to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization, and to build a foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research. This CAREER project investigates how parental messages facilitate the resilience of girls and...

Effective: 2023-2028

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Joshua Hartshorne

Institution: Boston College

Basic research into understanding how children learn physics concepts has been pursued relatively independently in several different disciplines (cognitive psychology, developmental science, and physics education research), each of which has come to very different conclusions. One research literature suggests that people's pre-educational intuitions about mechanical physics are largely veridical, another literature suggests that these intuitions are largely incorrect, and yet another suggests...

Effective: 2023-2028

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Rene F Kizilcec

Institution: Cornell University

Predictive learning analytics (PLA) that have a focus on identifying students at risk of failing are gaining traction with leaders at all levels of education. The effective adoption and use of PLA in the US education system can promote educational attainment, STEM workforce development, and national development by supporting lower-resourced educational institutions and members of underserved communities. Prior research has focused on enhancing the technical implementation of these AI-based...

Effective: 2023-2028

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Yuko Okado

Institution: CSU Fullerton Auxiliary Services Corporation

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education, to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization, and to build a foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research. This CAREER project aims to broaden participation in the science, technology, engineering, and...

Effective: 2023-2028

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Emily G Peterson

Institution: American University

This project will investigate the role that curiosity plays in students’ learning about scientific phenomena. Curiosity is a hallmark of scientific discovery and can propel students to ask questions, explore scientific ideas, enhance memory, and boost persistence during learning. Yet, studies of curiosity have mostly focused on whether curiosity increases learning rather than how curiosity increases learning. Therefore, to understand how curiosity impacts learning about scientific phenomena,...

Effective: 2023-2028

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Tolani A Britton

Institution: University of California-Berkeley

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education, to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization, and to build a foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research. This CAREER project explores the postsecondary trajectories of persons with conviction histories...

Effective: 2023-2028

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Hwa Young Lee

Institution: Texas State University - San Marcos

Graph literacy, the ability to comprehend, interpret, and use graphical representations, is critical for students to learn mathematics, to succeed in STEM coursework and careers, and to engage in informed participation in society. Undoubtedly, understanding and supporting students’ development of graph literacy is an important task educators, researchers, and curricula developers collectively share. Studies have documented secondary school students’ difficulties with graphical...

Effective: 2023-2028

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Samantha Viano

Institution: George Mason University

Online STEM credit courses have become attractive to school leaders as a way to support students who fail STEM courses in face-to-face school year settings. However, there is little research about the processes involved in how schools make decisions regarding student credit recovery. The available research focuses solely on student results and is not definitive enough to support important policy decisions at the district level. This research brings redress to this policy dilemma. The researcher...

Effective: 2023-2028

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Zhen Bai

Institution: University of Rochester

Children are increasingly impacted by technological advances in artificial intelligence (AI) that provide personalized recommendations regarding the books they read, individualized lessons, career-path plans, and friend circles. As smart learning companions (for example, animated intelligent characters/agents) become popular, children are at risk of overestimating and over-trusting AI given their tendency to anthropomorphize such intelligent systems. This CAREER project investigates the...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Lin Bian

Institution: University of Chicago

The increased demand for intellectual talent has highlighted the need for more female scientists, yet women are consistently underrepresented in the STEM domain. A pervading stereotype associating intellectual talent with men rather than women is a powerful cultural message that is in part responsible for this gender gap, termed the gender brilliance stereotype. This pernicious stereotype emerges early and immediately shapes children’s interests. To tackle this gender disparity from its...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Courtney L Ngai

Institution: Colorado State University

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education, to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization, and to build a foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research. This CAREER project aims to investigate the experiences of persons excluded because of ethnicity...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Shanta R Robinson

Institution: University of Chicago

Existing educational inequities produce complex challenges for Black students, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classrooms. Black students who show promise for success in STEM while experiencing homelessness find themselves particularly marginalized at the intersection of race and class. The purpose of this project is to center the voices and experiences of Black, high achieving homeless adolescents to better understand the resources and strengths they...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Erin Ottmar

Institution: Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Many middle and high school students in the United States do not reach proficiency in algebra. When solving algebraic expressions and equations, students not only need to perform procedures, but also identify mathematical structure, attend to important perceptual cues, and make decisions about which steps are most appropriate or productive in a particular problem context. Math teachers are critical to supporting and improving students’ math achievement by providing high-quality feedback,...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Yu Chen

Institution: Louisiana State University

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education, to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization, and to build a foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research. This CAREER project will examine psychological and social factors that are influential to...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Jeremy R Manning

Institution: Dartmouth College

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). The project is also funded from the EHR Core Research (ECR) program with co-funding from the Human Networks and Data Science (HNDS) program in SBE.The goal of this CAREER project at Dartmouth University is to advance our understanding of how students learn STEM concepts through online course videos in order to improve online education. Continued expansion of the internet backbone and...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Jamie Jirout

Institution: University of Virginia Main Campus

This project will explore how to promote students’ curiosity as a way of supporting science learning. Students’ interest in science significantly relates to their science performance, but few list it as their most interesting subject. One way to promote interest in science and to make learning and teaching more enjoyable is to support students’ curiosity. In addition to its importance to motivation and innovation in STEM areas, curiosity has been shown to lead to learning that more...

Effective: 2022-2027

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Homero Murzi

Institution: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that supports early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education, to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization, and to build a foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research. This CAREER...

Effective: 2022-2026

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Ido Davidesco

Institution: University of Connecticut

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). Attention is dynamic and tends to fluctuate between external and internal states, and thus focusing attention on an instructor in undergraduate science courses for a long period of time is extremely taxing. While external attention, the selection and modulation of sensory information (e.g., focusing on an instructor’s voice while ignoring background noise), has been studied extensively,...

Effective: 2022-2022

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Lori Andersen

Institution: University of Hawaii

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2), and by the EHR Core Research program. The project will investigate the use of science curriculum features to develop culturally diverse fifth-grade students’ abilities to use scientific thinking tools. Thinking tools will include crosscutting concepts such as systems and system models, patterns, and cause and effect, as well as cultural concepts, such as reciprocity, human-nature relations,...

Effective: 2021-2026

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Kerrie G Wilkins-Yel

Institution: University of Massachusetts Boston

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education, and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. This project aims to serve the national interest by addressing the inequitable representation of graduate Women of Color (WoC) (i.e., Black/African American, Latina, Indigenous, and Asian...

Effective: 2021-2026

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Ginger Shultz

Institution: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

This project aims to increase the support students from non-dominant groups receive in schools by understanding better how teacher training and curricular resources can make curricula relevant and compelling to those students. Culturally relevant education makes visible the value of students’ diverse perspectives and experiences and may better support underserved students in STEM. While culturally relevant educational approaches are powerful, they rely on the teachers' competence in the...

Effective: 2021-2026

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Fatma Baytar

Institution: Cornell University

The loss of U.S. apparel production jobs overseas and a subsequent decline in manufacturing infrastructure after the 1980s was highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic, when demand for domestically produced personal protective equipment could not be met. In order to address this deficit, the U.S. textile industry requires the physical and human resources to update, upskill, and accelerate manufacturing. At the core of this transformation are 2D/3D digital technologies, which enable instant...

Effective: 2021-2026

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Shetay Ashford-Hanserd

Institution: Texas State University - San Marcos

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education, to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization, and to build a foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research. This project will examine the effects of community cultural wealth on the persistence of Black and...

Effective: 2021-2026

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Bryce Hughes

Institution: Montana State University

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. This project awarded to a CAREER scholar has the goal to examine the participation of LGBTQ students in undergraduate STEM programs to understand how...

Effective: 2021-2026

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Valerie J Taylor

Institution: Lehigh University

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. This CAREER award supports experimental and longitudinal studies that aim to increase diversity and inclusion in higher education STEM culture. The...

Effective: 2021-2026

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Allyson Mackey

Institution: University of Pennsylvania

It is critically important that all U.S. children, regardless of socioeconomic background, are prepared to join the scientific workforce of the future. Prior research shows that having a strong early start in science and math is crucial to later academic success. This study combines innovative approaches in neuroscience, psychology, and education to predict and improve science learning in early elementary school, when foundational scientific knowledge and skills are beginning to be built. This...

Effective: 2021-2026

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Kirstin C Busch

Institution: North Carolina State University

Developing solutions to large-scale collective problems -- such as resilience to environmental challenges -- requires scientifically literate communities. However, the predominant conception of scientific literacy has focused on individuals, and there is not consensus as to what community level scientific literacy is or how to measure it. Thus, a 2016 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report, “Science Literacy: Concepts, Contexts, and Consequences,” stated that...

Effective: 2021-2026

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Ian M Lyons

Institution: Georgetown University

Numeracy and math skills among adults and children in the United States routinely rank poorly relative to those from comparable nations. Progress in mathematics education can be facilitated by identification and removal of factors that impede math engagement and learning. One such factor is anxiety about mathematics. Math anxiety predicts avoidance of math and poor math achievement, and disproportionately affects individuals with math learning disabilities, women, minorities, and those from...

Effective: 2020-2025

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Natalie S King

Institution: Georgia State University Research Foundation, Inc.

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. This project awarded to a CAREER scholar has the goal to explore the ways in which Black girls develop positive science, technology, engineering, and...

Effective: 2020-2025

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Sharon Lynn Chu

Institution: University of Florida

A significant problem in science learning is that students do not always see the relevance of the concepts they are learning. This lack of perceived relevance may then lead to less student engagement in science. This project will investigate how to connect 4th to 6th grade students’ out-of-classroom, everyday experiences with formal in-classroom science instruction through the use of wearable and visualization technologies. Students will use wearable technologies to capture their everyday...

Effective: 2020-2025

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Julie Stanton

Institution: University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc

Metacognition refers to awareness and control of one's own thinking. Previous research shows that supporting students' development and use of their metacognitive skills can enhance their success in STEM courses. For example, by using their metacognitive skills as they learn about new ideas, students can better identify concepts they do not understand. This knowledge allows them to select, implement, reflect upon, and adjust their learning strategies to build better understanding over time....

Effective: 2020-2025

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Luc Paquette

Institution: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Debugging, the process of identifying and resolving defects in computer programs, is an important skill to acquire while learning to program. However, many novice programmers, with good understanding of programming, struggle with the debugging process. Despite this, debugging is rarely explicitly taught. This project will use data-driven approaches to study the debugging processes of novice programmers enrolled in a college level introductory computer science course, identify the meaningful...

Effective: 2020-2025

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Daniel L Reinholz

Institution: San Diego State University Foundation

This project will study how data visualizations may help university faculty recognize their implicit biases and promote equitable participation in their classrooms. Participation is a key part of learning, but implicit biases can result in different opportunities for different groups of students to participate in STEM classrooms. Such differences can cause inequities in learning outcomes that may lead to underrepresentation of women, students of color, and other groups in the STEM workforce. By...

Effective: 2020-2025

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Marijel C Melo

Institution: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Makerspaces are places for hands on application of STEM concepts and skills. They are stocked with high-tech tools, supplies, and equipment, such as 3D printers, to support collaborative, creative work to build things. Given their potential to support STEM learning, makerspaces are increasingly integrated into universities across the country. However, if observers watched to see who decides to take advantage of a makerspace, they would see many students stick their heads in the door, look...

Effective: 2020-2025

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Jacqueline M Chen

Institutions: University of Utah, University of Connecticut

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. This project awarded to a CAREER scholar has the goal to increase our understanding of effective faculty mentoring and its connection to STEM graduate...

Effective: 2020-2025

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Michael K Scullin

Institution: Baylor University

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. This award to a scientist at Baylor University has the goal of improving STEM education at the undergraduate level by bridging the gap between...

Effective: 2020-2024

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Joi-Lynn Mondisa

Institution: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. This project awarded to a CAREER scholar has the goal to discover and understand effective, evidence-based mentoring practices and strategies that...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Moira R Dillon

Institution: New York University

Only humans are capable of doing formal mathematics, like the geometry in Euclid's Elements. The arguments and proofs of this geometry require one to imagine points so small they have no dimension and lines that extend so far they never end. And yet the points and lines experienced in everyday life have dimension and are finite. Where do the uniquely human ideas of abstract points and lines come from? To what extent does human reasoning work with idealizations and abstractions and to what...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Joseph E Dunsmoor Jr

Institution: University of Texas at Austin

The goal of this project, led by a new investigator at the University of Texas, is to understand the conditions by which poor learning can be transformed into a durable memory, with the ultimate goal of improving educational outcomes. The project leverages groundbreaking behavioral neuroscience research in rodents showing that weak memories can be enhanced through exposure to novelty around the time of learning. It is known that novelty exposure stimulates the molecular and cellular processes...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Andrea N Ofori-Boadu

Institution: North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. This project awarded to a CAREER scholar at North Carolina A&T State University has the goal to understand the professional identity development...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Tessa C Andrews

Institution: University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc

Active-learning instruction refers to teaching methods that engage students during a significant amount of class time in work designed to help them learn. When compared with traditional lecturing, studies have shown that active-learning instruction can enhance students' science learning. Active learning is also associated with increased retention of underrepresented minorities in science courses. However, studies also show that the learning gains achieved in active-learning classrooms vary...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Benjamin Zwickl

Institution: Rochester Institute of Tech

This CAREER project investigates learning and assessment of problem-solving in context-rich settings, such as research laboratories, project-based courses, and STEM workplaces. It includes an education plan focused on transferring the research to improve education. Because these context-rich, problem-solving experiences more closely mimic professional work, they offer important venues for STEM workforce development. However, these environments tend to be resource and time-intensive compared to...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Teomara Rutherford

Institutions: University of Delaware, North Carolina State University

The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that will generate fundamental knowledge in the field. This Early Faculty Career Development project supports the generation of knowledge through the building of a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research in STEM disciplines. It will examine ways to address a national concern for strengthening students' mathematics competency by enhancing their content knowledge in and motivation for...

Effective: 2018-2024

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Yasemin Copur-Gencturk

Institution: University of Southern California

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) plays a vital role in carrying out quality instruction and improving students' learning. Despite the evidence reported in expert-novice teacher literature suggesting that teachers become experts by gaining PCK through on-the-job learning, little is known about what and how teachers learn during their early career. This project addresses the fundamental issue of how and under what conditions beginning Grades 3 to 7 teachers of mathematics improve their PCK,...

Effective: 2018-2024

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Zhe Wang

Institutions: Texas A&M University, Texas Tech University

This project will examine the role that mathematics anxiety plays in impeding the development of mathematical competency. Mathematics anxiety describes the feeling of fear and apprehension experienced prior to or during math related activities. It is a highly prevalent emotion in the student population. Highly math anxious students, compared to their low math anxiety counterparts, exhibit lower math achievement and less interest in math-related career paths. To understand more precisely why and...

Effective: 2018-2024

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Jacquelyn Chini

Institution: The University of Central Florida Board of Trustees

In U.S. colleges and universities about 25% of undergraduate students and 20% of graduate students with a disability enroll in science and engineering fields. Surprisingly, the economic well-being of persons with disabilities has decreased since the passage of anti-discrimination laws such as the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. However, STEM careers offer better financial outcomes for individuals with disabilities. Additionally, economic projections suggest an increasing need to recruit...

Effective: 2018-2024

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Sepehr Vakil

Institutions: Northwestern University, University of Texas at Austin

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. This project has the goal to investigate how undergraduate learning contexts may constrain or facilitate productive interactions between ethical,...

Effective: 2018-2024

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Samantha Daley

Institution: University of Rochester

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project will pursue integrated research and education efforts to broaden participation, persistence, and success in advanced science coursework and career progression for students with learning disabilities, the largest disability category in United States' public education. Despite the potential for academic and career success in STEM, students with learning disabilities participate in advanced science courses and pursue STEM careers at much lower...