Effective: 2025-2030

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Ordene Edwards

Institution: Kennesaw State University

Cultivating a more academically successful engineering student body will not only produce more and better engineers but it will also broaden the talent pool in support of our nation’s STEM innovation ecosystem. Two significant challenges that engineering programs face though are student retention and career readiness. Expectancy-value theory offers a relevant motivational grounding to understand these challenges faced by engineering students. The project will assess the effectiveness of a...

Effective: 2025-2029

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Meta Brown, Aiday Sikhova

Institutions: Ohio State University, Texas Technology University

The Ohio State University and Texas Tech University are collaborating on an EDU Core Research project to identify factors that affect participation in STEM education and the workforce. This project will specifically address access to STEM education and the workforce by examining student debt and its effects on participation in STEM majors. Students who major in STEM fields frequently earn more than their non-STEM counterparts, and STEM is critical for the economy and for addressing today's...

Effective: 2025-2028

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Ross J Benbow

Institution: University of Wisconsin Madison

Rural students pursuing STEM degrees often face unique challenges as they navigate academic and career pathways far from home, with fewer built-in opportunities for mentorship, peer connection, or institutional support. Yet, many bring with them strong social networks that may play a critical--but understudied--role in their persistence and success. This project seeks to examine these issues by studying the links between STEM career pathway persistence and social support networks among rural...

Effective: 2025-2028

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Nicholas Young

Institution: University of Georgia

The NSF ECR Building Capacity of STEM Education Research (BCSER) program contributes to the NSF mission 42 U.S. Code Chapter 16 by building the US workforce undertaking STEM education research. The BCSER Individual Investigator Development in STEM Education Research (IID) track supports individual investigators who are experienced STEM education researchers to develop expertise in new areas that will contribute to advancing STEM education knowledge. STEM education research generates the...

Effective: 2025-2028

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Alexandra C Strong

Institution: Cornell University

As a field, engineering education has focused significant effort on overcoming barriers to change, often through solutions requiring high levels of administrative and financial support. While achieving impact, these solutions have the potential to miss the hundreds of departments and institutions that do not have access to these same resources. Further, the field’s focus on specific barriers has overshadowed existing change approaches among educators in resource-limited contexts. The stories...

Effective: 2025-2027

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Aramati A Casper

Institution: Colorado State University Fort Collins

The project will support the goals of a) advancing the field of STEM education through helping to identify factors that support or hinder the persistence of undergraduate students in STEM and b) building the PI’s research capacity in statistical modeling. To achieve these goals, the PI will complete statistical courses and work with a mentor team to be able to build complex statistical models that explicitly incorporate, rather than ignore, variables related to individuals’ experiences and...

Effective: 2025-2027

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Gabriel LeBlanc

Institution: University of Tulsa

This proposal, “Developing Skills in Qualitative Analysis for a New STEM Education Researcher through the Evaluation of Science Identity in Student-Workers,” submitted by the University of Tulsa, focuses on developing the skills of the PI in qualitative research methods. The goal is to investigate differences in science identity development between STEM undergraduate students participating in research opportunities, student work involving lab skills, and student work not involving lab...

Effective: 2025-2027

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Javen S Weston

Institution: University of Tulsa

While science fairs can support engagement in STEM learning and promote STEM career exploration, students from economically disadvantaged and racially diverse communities in the Tulsa, Oklahoma region often face barriers to their participation. Specifically, students from both Tulsa Public Schools (a diverse urban school district) and small districts located in Creek County, OK (a rural county in the region) are typically underrepresented at the Tulsa Regional Science Fair, with most...

Effective: 2025-2027

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Deeksha Seth

Institution: Villanova University

Integrated STEM learning experiences can support students in making connections across disciplines, fostering a more holistic understanding of STEM concepts and how these concepts co-exist in the real world. Different emerging technologies, including educational robots, hold promise in supporting integrated STEM learning. Despite this promise, however, there has been limited attention towards examining the impact of educational robots in the context of integrated STEM learning. To address this...

Effective: 2024-2029

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Roger E Beaty, Adam E Green, Dan R Johnson, Indre Viskontas

Institutions: Pennsylvania State University, Georgetown University, Washington and Lee University, University of San Francisco

Creativity is a fundamentally interesting and important aspect of cognition. It is already among the most valuable attributes of the STEM workforce, especially in engineering which requires generating and evaluating novel solutions to complex problems. It is projected to become even more vital in the innovation economy of the near future. Nonetheless, creativity is not generally integrated into engineering coursework nor is the explicit assessment of it a common part of student evaluation....

Effective: 2024-2029

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Holly O Okonkwo

Institution: University of California San Diego

Solving for today's grand societal challenges requires cutting-edge, transdisciplinary research. At the same time, the underrepresentation of Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) in STEM fields continues to be a top challenge impacting our ability to solve for the aforementioned grand societal challenges, which disproportionately impact BIPOC communities. This project places these two priorities in conversation with each other, 1) addressing racial inequity and broadening participation in...

Effective: 2024-2029

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Pablo Alejandro Duran Oliva, Nancy E Kress

Institutions: Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Colorado Boulder

The implementation of active learning approaches in STEM undergraduate courses has significantly increased over the past few decades. Classrooms traditionally dominated by lectures have been reworked into environments where students actively participate in discussions, problem-solving, group work, and hands-on projects. Improvement in students' overall academic achievement in these environments has consistently been reported, but researchers have found that some students encounter barriers that...

Effective: 2024-2029

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Heather J Bachman

Institution: University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh

A growing body of research has examined parents’ efforts to support young children’s number and spatial math skill development in the home. Past research typically examines home math activities or parent talk about math and spatial concepts during the preschool years. However, during elementary school, it is unclear how parents balance greater academic rigor and homework assistance, increasing digital media use, and home math activities to support children’s continued math learning. This...

Effective: 2024-2029

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Jordan A Conwell

Institution: University of Texas Austin

Whether individuals have science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills has become increasingly consequential for their life chances in today's knowledge economy. Using statewide administrative data from Texas, this study will investigate high school students' utilization of the state's "STEM endorsement" - an optional credential passed into state law in 2013 indicating a student has completed additional STEM coursework beyond minimum graduation requirements - and their pathways...

Effective: 2024-2029

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Mark V Huerta, Karin Jensen, Julie P Martin

Institutions: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, University of Georgia

Mental health and well-being are rising concerns nationally. University faculty are no exception, as academia is known as a high stress environment. This is a national study of the prevalence and severity of mental health problems among faculty working in STEM disciplines. The project will examine specific factors that positively and negatively impact STEM faculty mental health and well-being and how academic systems affect these factors for different demographic groups. In doing so, the...

Effective: 2024-2029

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Jennifer M Blaney

Institutions: Northern Arizona University, University of Georgia

As the U.S. invests in efforts to build its capacity to lead the world in the development of artificial intelligence and other areas of computer science, it faces a critical workforce bottleneck—a shortage of computer scientists to meet workforce demands in industry and academia. One way to effectively expand the computer science workforce is to develop a pathway from community colleges to undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Community college transfer students in computer science are...

Effective: 2024-2028

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Diana Leyva

Institution: University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh

Many caregivers of pre-school aged children find family math programs burdensome, which decreases engagement, sustainability, and ultimately the success of the programs. This is particularly the case for families that face opportunity gaps in math education. This project aims to test whether two low-touch, high-benefit family math programs improve family math engagement and preschool-aged children's math skills. Both programs are tailored to each family's daily routines, do not require specific...

Effective: 2024-2027

Funding Type: BCSER Institute

Principal Investigators: Ken Frank, Guanglei Hong

Institutions: Michigan State University, University of Chicago

The goal of this project is to train a cohort of early- and mid-career scholars to become leaders in applying advanced quantitative and computational methods to STEM education research. Specifically, the institute supported by this project will seek to (a) deepen participants’ methodological training to rigorously apply cutting-edge methods to STEM education research, (b) provide participants with sustained methodological support in research planning, data analysis, and publication, and (c)...

Effective: 2024-2027

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Megan Austin

Institution: American Institutes for Research the Behavioral Sciences

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses are critical to advancing STEM education research. However, conducting high-quality systematic reviews and meta-analyses is resource intensive and time-consuming. The proposed project seeks to increase the efficiency, quality, and transparency of systematic reviews and meta-analyses through the expansion of MetaReviewer, a free, web-based software tool that makes it easier for researchers to conduct systematic reviews and meta-analyses. With previous NSF...

Effective: 2024-2027

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Felice J Levine

Institution: American Educational Research Association

The American Educational Research Association (AERA) Grants Program will build research and scientific capacity to advance knowledge related to STEM education. The Grants Program includes four primary objectives: 1) advance knowledge through dissertation grants and small research grants that support fundamental STEM education research based on secondary data analysis of large-scale datasets; 2) create opportunities for researchers and scholars in STEM education research; 3) foster a culture of...

Effective: 2024-2027

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Stacy A Doore, Hari Prasath Palani

Institutions: Colby College, Northeastern University

Researchers at Northeastern University, the University of Maine, and Colby College are conducting research focused on developing and testing a technology-based solution that improves the accessibility of spreadsheet data tasks for blind and low vision (BLV) STEM employees. Data tasks include data exploration, data manipulation, and data analysis, which are often inaccessible to BLV employees due to the visual attributes of commonly used data tools and the limitations of current keyboard-based...

Effective: 2024-2027

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Louis Leblond

Institution: Pennsylvania State University

This BCSER Individual Investigator Development (IID) project will build the Principal Investigator's, an Associate Teaching Professor of Physics, capacity to carry out high-quality STEM education research, with the goal of improving student learning in on-line STEM courses. In addition, to the planned professional development, the project will support a pilot STEM education research project that investigates on-line learning physics course design factors and student factors that impact learning...

Effective: 2024-2027

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Thuy Vu

Institution: University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

This BCSER Individual Investigator Development (IID) project will build the PIs expertise in STEM education research study design, research methods, and data analysis techniques to complement their Civil Engineering expertise. In addition, to planned professional development the project will support a pilot STEM education research project. The pilot is designed to result in new knowledge about remedial math training for civil engineering undergraduate students. This research is important...

Effective: 2024-2027

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Jessica M Karch

Institution: Terc

The complicated challenges of the 21st century, such as facing climate change and adapting to rapidly changing technology, cannot be answered by individual disciplines; they are simply too complex. Scientists, citizens, and stakeholders from multiple areas must work together to develop innovative ways to solve these challenges. Consequently, there have been a growing number of graduate programs designed to train scientists as interdisciplinary researchers. At the same time, many universities...

Effective: 2024-2027

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Kamden Strunk

Institution: Virginia Commonwealth University

Researchers in higher education seeking to understand challenges to broadening participation in STEM disciplines have generally focused on a few key areas such as visibility and representation, campus climate issues, and institutional policies and support mechanisms. This project seeks to enrich the STEM education enterprise’s understanding of the breadth of backgrounds and experiences of undergraduate STEM majors by filling crucial gaps in the literature. Namely, this study will take an...

Effective: 2024-2027

Funding Type: Mid-Career Advancement (MCA)

Principal Investigator: Kelly Riedinger

Institution: Oregon State University

This project aims to serve the national interest by exploring community-based participatory research and relevant theories from disability studies and organizational change to implement inclusive practices for developmentally disabled employees, interns, and volunteers in informal STEM education settings such as zoos and aquariums. The investigator will implement a mentorship and professional learning plan specifically focused on three key areas: 1) developing deeper understanding of theories...

Effective: 2024-2027

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Haiwen Chu

Institution: Wested

Millions of students in the U.S. are identified as English-language learners. However, there is still limited research about the design of tasks and curriculum that best support their mathematics learning. This project will examine how learners use mathematics language and concepts in eighth-grade. The study will include interviews with individuals, pairs, and small groups to explore how students discuss their mathematical thinking and use language to describe mathematics concepts. The products...

Effective: 2024-2027

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Praveen Meduri

Institution: University Enterprises Incorporated

This project, submitted by California State University-Sacramento, proposes Project SOAR (investigating Students Online self-efficacy, Academic performance, and course Redesign). The aim is to study how student academic performance may influence redesign of online STEM courses (electrical engineering, computer science) to improve student self-efficacy, with the goal of improving student retention and decreasing the dropout rate. This research pilot study will be paired with professional...

Effective: 2024-2027

Funding Type: BCSER Institute

Principal Investigator: Maria Ong

Institution: Terc

This project, Promoting Investigators’ Capacity in STEM Education Literature Synthesis (PICSELS), will train investigators to use qualitative meta-synthesis methods in their STEM education research practices. Qualitative meta-synthesis is a set of methods that involves collecting, analyzing, and synthesizing qualitative research studies to identify patterns and themes across them, leading to new insights on a specific topic based on examining a broad body of studies which provides more...

Effective: 2024-2027

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Peter F Halpin

Institution: University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

Research studies in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education often seek to evaluate the impact of educational interventions (e.g., new curricula, new instructional practices) on student outcomes (e.g., STEM learning, persistence in STEM fields). Systematic reviews of the STEM education research literature have repeatedly shown that the results of impact evaluations can vary widely depending on how student outcomes are measured. For example, if student outcomes are measured...

Effective: 2024-2027

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Ha Nguyen

Institution: University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

This project plans to investigate fundamental questions in STEM learning and learning environments, specifically how to design and integrate artificial intelligence (AI) to support equitable K-12 science education. The project will explore a promising solution involving multimodal AI to design automated feedback for formative science assessments. Insights from this research will illustrate how AI feedback can be applicable to a variety of assessment modalities and science content, promote...

Effective: 2024-2027

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Maura J Borrego

Institution: University of Texas Austin

There has been tremendous growth in U.S. colleges and universities in the number of students with nonapparent disabilities including learning disabilities such as dyslexia and auditory processing disorder; ADHD; and psychiatric conditions. There is not much research about how professors can best support these students. In transitioning from high school to college, disabled students must become more proactive self-advocates to navigate the rules and systems for accommodation, which include...

Effective: 2024-2027

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Robb W Lindgren, Jason W Morphew

Institutions: University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, Purdue University

Mathematical literacy and statistical reasoning are critical for making day-to-day decisions in a world that is quickly moving online and increasingly data driven. For example, many lifestyle choices such as smoking, eating meat, or using a seatbelt while driving require individuals to think and reason about the probability of different outcomes rather than simple cause and effect. Unfortunately, a large percentage of students have misconceptions about probability and statistics that can lead...

Effective: 2024-2026

Funding Type: BCSER Institute

Principal Investigator: Odis D Johnson Jr

Institution: Johns Hopkins University

This project extends the training and community building activities of the Institute in Critical Quantitative, Computational, and Mixed Methods (ICQCM), a data science training institute established in 2019. The project seeks to increase the number of faculty and postdoctoral researchers who utilize quantitative and computational research methods in research on populations underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields of study. The goals are to enable...

Effective: 2024-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Mariana Castro

Institution: University of Wisconsin Madison

Multilingual learners are the fastest growing student population in the United States. Therefore, it is concerning that they have shown poor performance on national science assessments. Despite this concern, few teachers report feeling prepared to engage them in science instruction. This project aims to prepare science teachers to increase their knowledge, skill and efficacy in facilitating multilingual learners' engagement in scientific argumentation, which is an essential skill in science...

Effective: 2024-2026

Funding Type: Conference

Principal Investigator: Erin M Lynch

Institution: Quality Education for Minorities Network

Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) jurisdictions are important to the national science and engineering ecosystem. Unfortunately, in the ESPCoR states of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana only a small proportion of institutions are likely to submit proposals to the National Science Foundation as compared to their counterparts across the country. There is critical national need to support the engagement of EPSCoR jurisdictions in research and development capacity...

Effective: 2024-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Malcolm Haynes, Tonisha B Lane

Institutions: W1fb Us Military Academy, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Teamwork is an integral part of engineering and computer science curricula. However, underrepresented students, particularly Black and Latinx students, especially those of lower socioeconomic status, tend to encounter adverse team experiences beyond those generally encountered by all students. A team-based learning environment that values each individual student’s assets can potentially decrease occurrences of negative team experiences rooted in racial bias, increase belongingness, and...

Effective: 2024-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Ivan A Hernandez

Institution: California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo

The United States significantly benefits from scientific innovation. The breadth of scientific innovation is fueled by the skills, knowledge, and experience (the human capital) of the people who make up the scientific workforce. To promote greater scientific creativity and innovation, science learning and training environments must function as contexts that invite, cultivate, and leverage the broadest and most unique knowledge, skills, and perspectives. Science faculty who lead academic...

Effective: 2024-2025

Funding Type: Conference

Principal Investigator: Ilaria Berteletti

Institution: Gallaudet University

The Mathematical Cognition and Learning Society’s (MCLS) mission is to promote the communication of scientific research on mathematical cognition and learning and advance the study of its typical and atypical development, neural substrates, genetic and environmental influences, cultural variation, and malleability. The MCLS is also committed to fostering diversity and inclusion within its activities to broaden the participation of underrepresented researchers and ensure discoveries are...

Effective: 2024-2025

Funding Type: Conference

Principal Investigator: Mercy W Mugo

Institution: Quality Education for Minorities Network

There is a need to develop a diverse community of STEM education researchers from many different institutions. This workshop will engage faculty from Minority-Serving Institutions who are interested in grant-funding for their STEM education research and are eligible for the CAREER program. The sessions will focus on developing a research agenda, proposal preparation, and connecting with other early career scholars in STEM education. Mentors and organizers will include CAREER awardees from the...

Effective: 2024-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Joy Thompson

Institution: Child Trends

STEM fields lack adequate representation of Black persons, thereby limiting their contribution of unique perspectives and ideas and their access to associated social and economic benefits. Deficit perspectives emphasize individual skills and motivation yet fail to acknowledge systemic inequities that shape learning, opportunities, and endeavors. The extent to which a person identifies with STEM – such as envisioning a future career or having a sense of enjoyment – also plays a role. For...

Effective: 2024-2025

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Thema Monroe-White

Institution: Berry College

Involving all citizens in science and innovation is key to technological advancement in the United States. The nation continues to face challenges in attracting and retaining underrepresented and minoritized (URM) students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and careers. The nation is experiencing rapid deployment of data-driven tools and technologies like generative AI and must be aware their potential harms, such as algorithmic biases. Thus, the lack of...

Effective: 2024-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Claire W Wladis

Institution: City University of New York Borough of Manhattan Community College

This project will investigate how higher education structures enable or disable diverse STEM students with dis/abilities. Students with dis/abilities are underrepresented in college and STEM fields, and they are also less likely to graduate, yet the reasons are not fully understood. Some research suggests that students with dis/abilities may seek informal accommodations, but little is known about online learning as an informal accommodation, which other informal accommodations students may...

Effective: 2024-2025

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Kelly A Murphy

Institution: Winston Salem State University

Institutions of higher education are taking steps to ameliorate practices that reinforce inequity in educational programs. This project will investigate how these changes impact enrollment and degree completion among Black and Latinx Ph.D. students and will provide valuable insights into whether these changes are effectively reducing racial/ethnic gaps in Ph.D. attainment. This research will contribute new knowledge about the practices that enhance recruitment, retention, and graduation in...

Effective: 2024-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Rachel L Renbarger

Institution: Family Health International

Although graduate school participation is increasing in the United States overall, students from marginalized groups in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) do not attend graduate school as often as other groups. In particular, low participation in graduate school by women and students from certain races and ethnicities (i.e., Black, Hispanic, indigenous) continues to create disparities in the STEM workforce. Graduate preparation programs can help undergraduate...

Effective: 2024-2025

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Christopher Owens

Institution: Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University College Station

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 examines the factors that influence LGBTQ undergraduate students’ decisions...

Effective: 2024-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Marjorie Rhodes

Institution: New York University

Gender stereotypes—including related to science, math, and intellectual potential more generally—take root in early childhood and contribute to immediate and long-term gender disparities in science engagement and achievement. The goal of this project is to reveal the processes underlying the development of such stereotypes in early childhood, while at the same time developing new approaches to reduce stereotype acquisition. The project tests the hypothesis that subtle but powerful features...

Effective: 2023-2028

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Claire W Wladis

Institution: City University of New York Borough of Manhattan Community College

This project will directly investigate which factors impact student decisions to enroll and persist in mathematics majors in the two-year college context. Given the fact that half of all mathematics majors are enrolled at two-year colleges, these institutions are a critical learning context to investigate. Further, the experiences of two-year college students are often significantly different from university students, and the retention models developed with four-year students are unlikely to...

Effective: 2023-2028

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Kendra S Cheruvelil, Isis H Settles

Institutions: Michigan State University, University of Michigan Ann Arbor

Person-Environment Fit (PE Fit) research reveals that education and career outcomes are improved by having an organizational environment that is congruent with an individual's needs, skills, and values. Because PE Fit is theorized at multiple organizational levels, this study will examine the STEM research group, department, and academic discipline. This study will build upon the PE Fit theory by addressing two novel aspects of environment: 1) authorship climate, in which intellectual...

Effective: 2023-2028

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Tuan D Nguyen

Institutions: Kansas State University, University of Missouri Columbia

STEM teachers play instrumental roles in shaping students' STEM learning experiences and aspirations. This CAREER research has several broad impacts - national policy, national and local recruitment strategies, and student access to educational opportunities. In the course of this CAREER award the principal investigator (PI) will carefully investigate the STEM teacher pipeline, and examine qualifications from teacher candidates who express interest in teaching STEM through to the eventual...