Effective: 2021-2025

Funding Type: Conference

Principal Investigators: Golnaz Arastoopour Irgens, Yoon Jeon Kim, David W Shaffer

Institutions: Clemson University, University of Wisconsin Madison

The Sixth International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography (ICQE24), to be held in the fall of 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, co-hosted by the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University, will build the capacity of NSF-supported communities to benefit from the highly promising research methodology of quantitative ethnography. Quantitative ethnography addresses the challenge of conducting rich qualitative analyses by using statistical techniques to warrant grounded, quantitative...

Effective: 2021-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: David I Miller

Institution: American Institutes for Research the Behavioral Sciences

This project will integrate high-quality experimental evidence on the existence of, and strategies to reduce, gender bias in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, including how gender bias may intersect with other identities such as race and ethnicity. Biases favoring men could thwart women’s training and careers in STEM fields in many ways, but research also suggests promising interventions for changing biased cultures and structures. This project will synthesize...

Effective: 2021-2025

Funding Type: BCSER Institute

Principal Investigator: Matthew Irvin

Institution: University of South Carolina Columbia

The goal of the Institute for Measurement MEthodology in Rural STEM Education (IMMERSE) is to increase the capacity of researchers to measure and study key concepts central to rural STEM education research. Drawing on measurement science and a unified validity framework, the IMMERSE training will enable rural researchers in STEM, social sciences, and education to undertake empirical studies that attend to rurality. Specifically, participants in the IMMERSE experience will obtain the skills to...

Effective: 2021-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Qingxia Li

Institution: Fisk University

The project is designed to enable the principal investigator to conduct an exploratory research project while acquiring skills and competencies to conduct robust STEM education research. The research component will examine factors and experiences that impact African American students’ decision to pursue careers that require quantitative and computational skills. The mentored professional development component will provide the investigator with expertise in qualitative research design and...

Effective: 2021-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Ramon Barthelemy, Charles R Henderson, Adrienne Traxler

Institutions: University of Utah, Western Michigan University, Wright State University

This project is a collaboration among the University of Utah as the lead institution and Western Michigan University and Wright State University as partners to investigate how women and gender and sexual minorities (GSM) construct and navigate their professional networks to support their post PhD physics careers. The goal is to use social network analysis with qualitative methods to characterize the professional support networks of women and GSM physicists to test the central hypothesis:...

Effective: 2021-2025

Funding Type: Mid-Career Advancement (MCA)

Principal Investigator: Karla Eitel

Institution: University of Idaho

The goal of the project is to explore Land education pedagogy and its curriculum and pedagogical innovations in the preparation of Native and non-Native educators to engage Native and non-Native students in environmental STEM education on Indigenous lands. The investigator will implement a professional development plan focused on pedagogical innovations within various teacher education and environmental STEM learning programs to (a) understand the tools and technologies that can support these...

Effective: 2021-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Jennifer L Wessel

Institution: University of Maryland College Park

This study aims to increase diversity in STEM academic workplaces by testing “nudge” interventions to help diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work matter in promotion and tenure decision-making. Nudges refer to deliberate changes to the decision-making context aimed at guiding people toward a particular behavior, which in this case is valuing DEI work. Many institutions have tried to reform the tenure process to reward DEI work, but there is little concrete evidence that any of these...

Effective: 2021-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Brooke C Coley, Kerrie Wilkins-Yel

Institutions: Arizona State University Immersion, University of Massachusetts Boston

To increase the diversity of the PhD-prepared workforce, understanding underlying issues affecting retention and completion of doctoral degrees is essential. Researchers at Arizona State University and University of Massachusetts Boston, propose to study the expressed needs of Black doctoral students in relation to faculty perceptions of what they are providing during advising relationships. Understanding the mental health impacts of cumulative experiences that marginalize Black graduate...

Effective: 2021-2024

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Sammy L Steen Jr

Institution: George Mason University

This project aims to increase the number of Black male youth who can be successful in advanced mathematics while in public schools. The researcher will use a mixed-methods design to gain a comprehensive and culturally appropriate student perspective. The project includes the implementation of a group counseling program for Black male students beginning in seventh grade and following them through eighth grade. The researcher will gain the knowledge and skills necessary to integrate quantitative...

Effective: 2021-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: David S Knight

Institution: University of Washington Seattle

The University of Washington is conducting an interdisciplinary research project that analyzes math and science teacher career pathways using longitudinal statewide data from Washington and Texas and the Baccalaureate and Beyond (B&B) Longitudinal Study dataset. There are three project objectives: (1) To inform evidence-based policies and practices for improving the math and science teacher workforce by studying the long-term career paths of those who leave teaching, (2) To build an...

Effective: 2021-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Suzanne T Ortega

Institution: Council of Graduate Schools

The Council of Graduate Schools examines the role of master’s education in STEM education workforce development. The project will contribute to the development of a data infrastructure for future research on master’s education while providing more nuanced insights into labor market outcomes of master’s degrees in STEM by various fields of study, gender, race/ethnicity, and career stages. Investigators will investigate the upskilling/reskilling pathways into master’s education and how...

Effective: 2021-2023

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Anne M Ho

Institution: University of Tennessee Knoxville

This project investigates the significance of Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (MKT) in an understudied population of instructors who fall between traditional divisions of high school and college teaching. Past research has typically assumed that an instructor is either a high school or college instructor, but not both. Degree and certification programs also make this assumption. However, many educators teach both secondary (high school) and tertiary (college) classes throughout the course...

Effective: 2020-2026

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Daniel L Reinholz

Institution: San Diego State University

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: 2020-2026

Funding Type: BCSER Institute

Principal Investigators: Margaret C Levenstein, Felice J Levine

Institutions: University of Michigan Ann Arbor, American Educational Research Association

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan and the American Education Research Association (AERA) propose to create an ECR Data Resource Hub, Partnership for Expanding Education Research in STEM (PEERS). The goal is to connect, educate, and build community around relevant forms of data and offer professional development focused on data skills, tools, and resources. PEERS will connect researchers to repositories and data sources as...

Effective: 2020-2026

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: David F Feldon, Jason Owen-Smith

Institutions: Utah State University, University of Michigan Ann Arbor

The study will assess the skills held by individuals at the time of PhD attainment and the measurable impacts that such skills may have on individual career trajectory. Investigators will conduct a longitudinal study that links individual-level data, academic program data, professional attainment data, and employer profile data. These data will enable an empirical assessment of the role that communication, leadership, and management skills play in shaping the career trajectories of PhD...

Effective: 2020-2026

Funding Type: Conference

Principal Investigators: Brendan R Eagan, Eric Hamilton

Institutions: University of Wisconsin Madison, Pepperdine University

The Seventh International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography (ICQE25), to be held in the fall of 2025, will build the capacity of NSF-supported communities to benefit from the highly promising research methodology of quantitative ethnography. Quantitative ethnography addresses the challenge of conducting rich qualitative analyses by using statistical techniques to warrant grounded, quantitative claims about thick qualitative descriptions. Quantitative ethnography can be applied to many...

Effective: 2020-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Philip A Vieira

Institution: California State University Dominguez Hills

In this capacity building project, the investigator proposes to investigate the impact of design thinking training combined with established pedagogical strategies in increasing student recruitment, persistence, and retention in STEM at a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) and a predominantly urban undergraduate institution. In this context, design thinking focuses on the iterative process by which solutions are derived, taking multiple perspectives from various disciplines, and encouraging...

Effective: 2020-2026

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Lisa Y Flores, Rachel L Navarro

Institutions: University of Missouri Columbia, University of North Dakota

Slow progress has been made over the past several years to broaden the involvement of groups who are underrepresented in engineering disciplines. There are a few important transition points along the pathway to becoming a practicing engineer (i.e., declaring a engineering major, graduating with an engineering degree, working in the engineering field). Increased efforts across the engineering ecosystem, but specifically during the college-to-work transition, are needed to broaden participation...

Effective: 2020-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Sarah L Ferguson

Institution: Rowan University

The project will examine the efficacy of an intervention designed to increase self-efficacy and motivation to pursue STEM careers among rural high school students. Researchers will use a design-based approach to partner with rural school districts to introduce students to high-need STEM career fields using virtual reality technology and career exploration modules. They will also guide students in assessing their potential fit for these fields. The researchers hypothesize that student career...

Effective: 2020-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Maria Ong

Institution: Terc

Native students and professionals are severely underrepresented in all STEM degree programs and professions in the U.S. This underrepresentation is often overlooked in research and discussions of equity in STEM. This abstract, and this project, uses the word "Native" as an umbrella to refer to American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders, First Nations, and other indigenous peoples of North America. This project will contribute to changing the conversation about Native...

Effective: 2020-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Ashkan Negahban

Institution: Pennsylvania State University

Researchers at Pennsylvania State University propose to create and utilize 3D virtual reality (VR) environments in engineering settings that immerse learners in complex simulation models representing a real-world situation instead of well-defined problems with existing solutions. By partnering with a simulation software company and industry consultants, the project will generate education modules aligned with industry needs and provide novel model-based systems for engineering education. The...

Effective: 2020-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Lorelle A Meadows, Denise J Sekaquaptewa

Institutions: Michigan Technological University, University of Michigan Ann Arbor

Women have been historically underrepresented in STEM fields, and research evidence suggests that subtle gender bias occurs in many STEM settings, especially those where women continue to be underrepresented. Social psychological research has demonstrated the negative effects of perceived bias or becoming aware that one is the target of stereotyping and discrimination. This project will provide a novel contribution to and extension of the perceived bias research by proposing that simply...

Effective: 2020-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Mala Htun

Institution: University of New Mexico

Researchers from New Mexico State University (NMSU) will implement an EHR Core Research (ECR) program research project. This ECR program supports work that advances fundamental research on STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development. The study will assess whether and how bystander intervention training - a successful approach in other contexts such as universities and the U.S. military - can be refined, adapted, and delivered to...

Effective: 2020-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Kendra S Cheruvelil, Isis H Settles

Institutions: Michigan State University, University of Michigan Ann Arbor

Researchers from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor will collaborate with researchers from Michigan State University to implement an EHR Core Research (ECR) project. The project will study how an inclusive educational and workplace climate can affect academic STEM career outcomes, particularly for early-career individuals from underrepresented groups. The proposers will develop a novel construct of inclusive authorship climate in which intellectual contributions are fully welcomed and...

Effective: 2020-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Karen L Webber

Institution: University of Georgia

The project examines how students’ work-related experiential activities (WREAs) may be affected by their institution’s geographic proximity to major economic and workforce hubs. WREAs include internships, co-ops, practicums, job shadowing, and other similar opportunities that enable students to apply knowledge in an authentic setting and that lead to successful and productive employment. The research will fill a knowledge gap by empirically documenting the influence of locale on...

Effective: 2020-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Suzanne T Ortega

Institution: Council of Graduate Schools

The Council of Graduate Schools will examine data about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) PhD career aspirations and alumni outcomes from a network of 70 diverse U.S. doctoral institutions. The proposed project will conduct a survey to examine individual and environmental factors that influence retention and persistence in STEM careers and transitions between employment sectors. The underlying assumption of the project is that individual attributes such as self-efficacy...

Effective: 2020-2023

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Ramon Barthelemy

Institution: University of Utah

This project is a ten-year follow up to a pilot study that examined the educational experiences and career goals of 21 women graduate students in physics and astronomy. The previous study results revealed a complex tapestry of experiences with mentoring, gender discrimination, and the development of career goals that influenced the students’ ultimate outcomes. The study showed that many were considering non-academic careers because of their perceptions of work-life balance and the academic...

Effective: 2020-2023

Funding Type: Conference

Principal Investigator: Richard S Moog

Institution: Pogil Project

This project aims to promote discipline-based education research (DBER) within the Process-oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) community of practitioners. Specifically, the project team will host a workshop for early- and mid-career POGIL practitioners led by a team of five DBER scholars. The goal of this event is to introduce current POGIL practitioners to the knowledge and skills involved in design, implementation, and methodology of STEM education research. The participants will be...

Effective: 2020-2023

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Simi T Hoque

Institution: Drexel University

This two-year project will analyze how adolescent girls develop as sustainable citizens as they take part in a college-based STEM summer program that offers hands-on workshops in sustainability science. As a Building Capacity in STEM Educational Research (BCSER) project, a key goal is to build the principal investigator's knowledge base and analytical expertise in STEM education research. This project aims to position the investigator to conduct longer-term research on broadening participation...

Effective: 2020-2023

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Cheryl Gomillion

Institution: University of Georgia

The proposal focuses on fundamental STEM education research that examines broadening participation and STEM workforce training in engineering graduate programs. The research will contribute to expanding the current understanding of the characteristics and functioning of STEM research labs (microcultures) that may impact the success of underrepresented graduate students. The Principal Investigator has designed a professional development plan that will support individual capacity building in...

Effective: 2020-2023

Funding Type: RAPID/EAGER

Principal Investigator: Gerald R Marschke

Institution: National Bureau of Economic Research

This RAPID project addresses the need to maintain resilience in the STEM workforce during a pandemic. The researchers aim to assess which STEM jobs in which industries are more or less able to telework in the near term during the COVID-19 pandemic. The project also will examine the distribution of STEM occupations and wages within firms and compare across industries to gain insight into how disruptive COVID-19 will be at the workplace level. The research team will use large-scale population...

Effective: 2020-2023

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Golnaz Arastoopour Irgens

Institution: Clemson University

Society’s reliance on digital technologies has resulted in enormous amounts of data being recorded, sorted, and analyzed. While improving human efficiency and life quality, data analytics can also reproduce inequities and further marginalize those from non-dominant populations, including women, people of color, and those who live in poverty. This two-year Building Capacity in STEM Education Research Individual Investigator Development project addresses this issue by developing a data science...

Effective: 2020-2022

Funding Type: Conference

Principal Investigator: Alexis N Petri

Institution: University of Missouri Kansas City

The proposed three-day conference "Integrating STEM Education Research Collaboration for Regional Prosperity" will highlight topics relevant to STEM education and workforce development in the greater Kansas City region. STEM education topics will include supporting student success, broadening participation in STEM, and developing partnerships between two- and four-year institutions. Regional prosperity topics will include identifying high-impact practices to retain STEM majors, promoting STEM...

Effective: 2020-2022

Funding Type: BCSER Institute

Principal Investigator: Jason Owen-Smith

Institution: University of Michigan Ann Arbor

The project will train and support diverse education and social science researchers to develop the skills necessary to effectively use large scale, privacy-protected administrative data to analyze core questions pertaining to STEM education. The goals are to provide technical training, methodological training, technical support for research project development, and community building for participants. The capacity building efforts leverage a successful research infrastructure, accessible data,...

Effective: 2020-2022

Funding Type: RAPID/EAGER

Principal Investigators: Chi-Ning Chang, Guan K Saw

Institutions: University of Kansas, University of Texas San Antonio, Claremont Graduate University

Researchers from the University of Texas at San Antonio and University of Kansas will examine how electronic mentoring (e-mentoring) affects student academic, career, and mental health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is an important topic particularly for faculty who are forced to continue mentoring and supporting students through computer-mediated communication technology. The study investigates the life and work challenges for engineering graduate students affected by the...

Effective: 2020-2022

Funding Type: Conference

Principal Investigator: Mary Bridget Kustusch

Institution: Depaul University

The proposed workshop will convene experts in discipline-based education research (DBER) to introduce novice DBER scholars to interdisciplinary educational theories and research methodologies and to support their scholarship through ongoing mentoring. The event aims to unite mathematics and physics researchers with discipline-based education researchers to share knowledge, develop new understandings, and create new networks. Participants will develop research questions around their interests,...

Effective: 2020-2022

Funding Type: Conference

Principal Investigators: Hironao Okahana, Deborah Silver

Institutions: Council of Graduate Schools, Rutgers University New Brunswick

Rutgers University and the Council of Graduate Schools propose to conduct a survey and workshop to develop templates for Individual Development Plans (IDPs) that can be used by STEM Master’s programs. The project responds to recommendations of the National Academies report on Graduate Education for the 21st Century and growing interest among master’s programs to use IDPs to encourage the acquisition of transferrable skills and career exploration for STEM master’s degree students. This...

Effective: 2020-2021

Funding Type: RAPID/EAGER

Principal Investigator: Suzanne T Ortega

Institution: Council of Graduate Schools

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...

Effective: 2020-2021

Funding Type: RAPID/EAGER

Principal Investigator: Matthew T Hora

Institution: University of Wisconsin Madison

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions will partner with Parker Dewey to generate a robust mixed-methods dataset about the impact of online internships on student progression. Internships, mandated by many STEM academic programs, are a form of work-based learning that can lead to academic and workforce success for undergraduate and graduate students. Traditional face-to-face internships also can enhance students’ social...

Effective: 2019-2026

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Tessa C Andrews

Institution: University of Georgia

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: 2019-2026

Funding Type: BCSER Institute

Principal Investigators: Therese D Pigott, Joshua R Polanin, Elizabeth Tipton, Ryan Williams

Institutions: Georgia State University, American Institutes for Research the Behavioral Sciences, Northwestern University

Improving the education of America’s youth in the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is a well-documented, widely endorsed federal policy priority. Several public and private initiatives have emerged to address this economic reality, including developing more rigorous standards, curricula, and assessments for prekindergarten through grade 12 education in science and mathematics. Addressing this problem requires a multi-pronged approach. The first part of...

Effective: 2019-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Emily A Dringenberg

Institution: Ohio State University

This EHR Core Research project involves a qualitative, exploratory study that will collect interview data to capture the beliefs and identities of first-year engineering students with respect to intelligence and engineering. Participants will be enrolled in the same introductory engineering courses across six distinct institutionalized pathways. Despite significant efforts to increase the participation of underrepresented groups in engineering, those who earn engineering undergraduate degrees...

Effective: 2019-2025

Funding Type: BCSER Institute

Principal Investigator: Larry V Hedges

Institution: Northwestern University

The primary goal of this set of workshops is to provide STEM education researchers with the framework, skills, and community they need to implement new developments in causal inference methods into their research. These methods will be immediately implementable in their current (or near future) studies and will result in stronger causal findings, providing higher-quality evidence regarding the potential of new innovations to improve STEM education broadly. Additionally, a secondary goal is to...

Effective: 2019-2025

Funding Type: BCSER Institute

Principal Investigator: Laura Stapleton

Institution: University of Maryland College Park

Despite the persistent under representation of individuals from underserved populations in STEM, there are not enough scholars and early career researchers trained to adequately study the issues. This training institute project will target early career scholars with research foci on issues of access and equity of underrepresented populations in STEM within either K-12 or postsecondary settings. The goal of the training institute is to focus on and improve education research study design,...

Effective: 2019-2025

Funding Type: Other

Principal Investigator: Philip L Bell

Institution: University of Washington Seattle

This project will examine how partnerships among state science leaders, education researchers and education practitioners cultivate vertical coherence and equity in state science education. This is an important study because in most states, the student population is becoming more diverse, and states need help in finding ways to better serve schools and districts within their jurisdictions. Through this effort, state science leaders will participate in a networked improvement community model...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Melissa Mazmanian

Institution: University of California Irvine

The project examines whether and how the class ceiling impacts the STEM workforce by focusing on the application and hiring process of elite internships, a key juncture in the path towards careers in Big Tech. By simultaneously studying the hiring process at Big Tech firms from the demand side evaluations of job applicants by employers and supply side choices and preparation of job applicants, the research will illuminate the hidden factors that shape who is offered elite internships. It fills...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Lara C Perez-Felkner

Institution: Florida State University

This EHR Core Research project will conduct research on women's participation in computing fields, with a focus on community college starters using a comprehensive dataset from Florida's educational institutions and national-level comparable data. Despite the growing demand for computer scientists and engineers, women's representation in this industry remains problematically low while their share of degree earners has declined nationally. In 2014, the most recent year for which U.S. national...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Benjamin Zwickl

Institution: Rochester Institute of Technology

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...

Effective: 2019-2023

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Ross J Benbow

Institution: University of Wisconsin Madison

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Student military service members and veterans, who are undergraduate students, face numerous medical, financial and social obstacles that universities and communities must address to prevent this skilled talent pool from leaving STEM before entering, or re-entering, our nation's workforce. For example, many service members and veterans have family or work...

Effective: 2019-2023

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Heather Griller Clark, Michael Krezmien

Institutions: Arizona State University Immersion, University of Massachusetts Amherst

The project will investigate the impact of a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) App-based curriculum on STEM career knowledge, interests, competencies, and readiness for incarcerated youth. Integrating STEM into Transition Education for Incarcerated Learners (INSITE) will integrate STEM workforce development activities into Merging Worlds, an empirically supported transition program, and deliver it through a UDL App-based framework to prepare and support STEM career readiness and employment...