Effective: 2020-2023

Funding Type: RAPID/EAGER

Principal Investigator: Gerald R Marschke

Institution: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc

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: Lisa B Limeri

Institutions: Texas Tech University, University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc

This project aims to develop a rigorous, evidence-based survey to measure the "mindset" of undergraduate STEM students. Mindset is a psychological trait that may influence student success and persistence. The mindset construct refers to whether a student believes that intelligence is a trait that is innate and unchangeable (called a fixed mindset) or malleable and improvable (called a growth mindset). When students struggle academically, it has been shown that those with a growth mindset are...

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: 2020-2023

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Geraldine L Cochran

Institution: Rutgers University New Brunswick

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving retention among first-year engineering majors. Research shows that many students who plan to major in engineering leave the field after their first year in college. This attrition is particularly true for women students and students from ethnic or racial groups that are underrepresented in STEM. The low retention rates are disturbing, since the nation has a growing need to increase its engineering workforce. Strategies known to...

Effective: 2020-2022

Funding Type: RAPID/EAGER

Principal Investigator: Christopher S Hulleman

Institution: University of Virginia Main Campus

The transition to online instruction necessitated by the COVID pandemic has created significant uncertainty for the nation’s college faculty, many of whom have not previously taught online. This research would examine how faculty mindsets about themselves and their students, as well as faculty perceptions of their university/college system’s messages about the transition, relate to their responses to the challenge of rapidly transitioning their teaching online, the quality of instruction...

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: Regents of the 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 Investigator: Susan A Gelman

Institution: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

In the current COVID-19 crisis, developing effective means of educating children about disease transmission is a matter of vital concern, not only for scientific literacy, but also for public health. Children play an important role in the transmission of contagious illness, given how frequently they engage in risky behaviors such as touching their faces or making physical contact with caregivers. Public health recommendations include teaching best practice to children to reduce disease spread,...

Effective: 2020-2022

Funding Type: RAPID/EAGER

Principal Investigators: Chi-Ning Chang, Guan K Saw

Institutions: University of Kansas Center for Research Inc, Claremont Graduate University, University of Texas at San Antonio

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 COVID-19...

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 Investigator: Eric Hamilton

Institution: Pepperdine University

This project was submitted in response to EHR Core Research (ECR) program announcement NSF 19-508. The ECR program of fundamental research in STEM education provides funding in critical research areas that are essential, broad and enduring. ECR supports projects that help synthesize, build and/or expand research foundations in the following focal areas: STEM learning, STEM learning environments, STEM workforce development, and broadening participation in STEM. The ECR program is distinguished...

Effective: 2020-2022

Funding Type: Conference

Principal Investigator: David J Purpura

Institution: Purdue University

This award to Purdue University provides partial support for a conference focused on the home numeracy environment (HNE). The conference addresses this critically important topic, drawing on researchers from a range of disciplines and literatures. A robust finding across these literatures is that achievement gaps in math exist at preschool and largely persist through high school. Though it is clear that socio-economic status (SES) plays a significant role in producing these gaps, a better...

Effective: 2020-2022

Funding Type: RAPID/EAGER

Principal Investigator: David R Schaefer

Institution: University of California-Irvine

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted universities worldwide to abruptly shift to remote learning. This coincides with a critical social change as students are urged to leave campus, “social distance,” and shelter-in-place; practices that will disrupt social network functioning and could lead to feelings of isolation, reduced motivation, and poorer learning outcomes. Worse, the social and academic consequences could be more severe for less academically prepared students (e.g., underrepresented...

Effective: 2020-2022

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Lei Liu

Institution: Educational Testing Service

The goal of this project, led by a team at Educational Testing Services, is to develop automated tools by which assessments aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) can be scored to reveal student reasoning patterns, some of which would reflect particular weaknesses in student reasoning. Reasoning patterns refer to various ways of student thinking when making sense of a natural phenomenon or trying to solve a problem. The investigators will conduct a proof of concept study to...

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: BCSER Institute

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

Institutions: Georgia State University Research Foundation, Inc., American Institutes for Research in 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: 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: 2019-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Sapna Cheryan

Institution: University of Washington

This EHR Core Research award is focused on broadening participation in computer science by investigating whether reframing academic interest as something malleable that must be discovered (i.e., a growth mindset of interest) helps remedy gender gaps in computer science. Despite the overall narrowing of the gender gap in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, the percentage of women computer science majors has remained less than 20% and has even decreased in recent...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Christina Krist

Institution: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This proposal was submitted in response to EHR Core Research (ECR) program announcement NSF 19-508. The ECR program of fundamental research in STEM education provides funding in critical research areas that are essential, broad and enduring. EHR seeks proposals that will help synthesize, build and/or expand research foundations in the following focal areas: STEM learning, STEM learning environments, STEM workforce development, and broadening participation in STEM. The ECR program is...

Effective: 2019-2024

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: 2019-2024

Funding Type: BCSER Institute

Principal Investigator: Brian Nosek

Institution: Center for Open Science

The Center for Open Science (COS) will create an EHR Core Research (ECR) Data Resource Hub to facilitate rigorous and reproducible research practices such as data sharing and study registration across the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education research community. The Hub will integrate training materials, infrastructure, community engagement, and innovation in research to advance rigorous research skills and behavior. In addition, the Hub will foster innovation in...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Min Li

Institution: University of Washington

This proposal was submitted in response to EHR Core Research (ECR) program announcement NSF 19-508. The ECR program of fundamental research in STEM education provides funding in critical research areas that are essential, broad and enduring. EHR seeks proposals that will help synthesize, build and/or expand research foundations in the following focal areas: STEM learning, STEM learning environments, STEM workforce development, and broadening participation in STEM. The ECR program is...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Paul W Schultz

Institutions: California State University San Marcos Corporation, Claremont Graduate University

Advancing a diverse and technically competent STEM workforce is critical for contributing to the progress of science and to the health, prosperity and welfare of our nation. While the number of Hispanic students, who are U.S. citizens and permanent residents, earning STEM bachelor's degrees has increased rapidly during the past decade, Hispanic students enrolled in STEM programs are leaving college or switching majors at higher rates than their White peers. This loss may be related to the...

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: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Michael W Giamellaro

Institution: Oregon State University

The primary goal of the ECR: BCSER Individual Investigator Development (IID) in STEM education research is to facilitate the acquisition of education research expertise to enable an investigator to successfully conceive and execute fundamental research with the potential to meaningfully advance current knowledge in one of ECR's research domains - learning and learning environments, broadening participation, and workforce development. This project, titled "Building Quantitative Capacity in...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Hilary C Barth

Institution: Wesleyan University

This proposal was submitted in response to EHR Core Research (ECR) program announcement NSF 19-508. The ECR program of fundamental research in STEM education provides funding in critical research areas that are essential, broad and enduring. EHR seeks proposals that will help synthesize, build and/or expand research foundations in the following focal areas: STEM learning, STEM learning environments, STEM workforce development, and broadening participation in STEM. The ECR program is...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal

Institution: University of Pittsburgh

The math skills of children from high income families have grown faster than those of children from middle- or low-income families resulting in a significant and persistent gap. These disparities emerge in preschool and are larger by the start of kindergarten. As children progress through school, the gap in math skills persists or even widens. Importantly, SES-related disparities in math skills have implications for long-term academic achievement and educational attainment, as well as access to...

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: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Erin M Lynch

Institutions: Tennessee State University, QUALITY EDUCATION FOR MINORITIES NETWORK, Winston-Salem State University

The proposed project will lay the foundation for a clearinghouse of broadening participation STEM education research at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The clearinghouse is envisioned as an online platform that will be populated with data collected through a systematic literature review during this initial phase. The investigator used the Vitae Researcher Development Framework to identify the STEM education research skills gaps that will be the focus of a comprehensive...

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: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Amy B Ellis

Institution: University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc

With funding from the EHR Core Research Program, this project will investigate how productive mathematical generalization can be supported in whole-classroom settings. Generalization is the ability to recognize patterns in relationships between numbers. An example of generalization is recognizing that 2 + 3 = 5, and generalizing that adding any even number to any odd number will produce an odd number. Generalization is a critical component of mathematical reasoning. As a result, researchers and...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Ilaria Berteletti

Institution: Gallaudet University

Early proficiency in math is related to later math performance, and more general academic achievement, as well as employment success. Deaf children already lag behind in math upon entrance in kindergarten. At the socio-economic level, this means these children are not entering STEM-related fields which are seen as a growing part of the workforce and an engine for continued economic development. In this project, the team will investigate how early language experiences can impact the acquisition...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Michael K Scullin

Institution: Baylor University

More than half of all college students are habitually sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation is known to have powerful, detrimental effects generally on brain functioning, yet the extent of its specific effects on mental activity is unknown. This project, led by researchers at Baylor University, will bring together a collaborative team of sleep scientists, educators, cognitive neuroscientists, and statisticians to address theoretical and applied issues at the nexus of sleep, creativity, and STEM...

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: 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: 2019-2024

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Nathanial P Brown

Institution: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park

This project will support an educational research project to design, implement, and analyze the results of survey that explores inclusive teacher behaviors in first year calculus classes. In addition, it will support professional development to enable the principal investigator, a new STEM education researcher, to develop the skills needed to conduct the project. Research at the K-12 level provides considerable evidence that classroom environment and teacher practice affect the growth mindset,...

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: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Claire W Wladis

Institution: CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College

This research project will investigate whether online courses provide increased access to college and STEM degrees, particularly for students typically underrepresented in STEM fields. Annually, between 28% and 36% of all post-secondary students in the U.S. enroll in at least one online course. The growth in online course enrollment contrasts with an overall decline in college enrollment. Thus, continued online course growth will have an escalating impact on degree progression and attainment....

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: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Roger E Beaty, Adam E Green, Mariale M Hardiman

Institutions: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park, Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University

This collaborative award to research teams at Pennsylvania State University, Georgetown University, and Johns Hopkins University will focus on creative thinking in STEM education and research. Creative thinking is critical for success in STEM fields, which often require generating novel hypotheses, flexibly connecting diverse information, and envisioning solutions to ill-defined problems. Creative innovation is a valuable attribute of the U.S. workforce in the global economy, and the ability to...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: Conference

Principal Investigator: Vanessa Rodriguez

Institutions: New York University, New York University Medical Center

This award to New York University will provide support for a workshop on Mind, Brain, and Education scheduled to be held in New York City in January 2020. It will bring researchers from multiple fields (e.g., education research, cognitive science, neuroscience) together with education practitioners (e.g., teachers, district leaders, parents) to share ideas about brain research and STEM learning in both formal and informal contexts. It will be an opportunity for researchers to share the results...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Sidney D'Mello

Institution: University of Colorado at Boulder

The project, based at the University of Colorado, will advance fundamental knowledge on learning from complex STEM texts. This is a critical skill for success in an increasingly information-driven world and workforce, but it is also an area where students consistently struggle. Scores on standardized assessments are stubbornly stagnant, troublesome achievement gaps remain, and the U.S. continues to lag behind its international peers. This is especially relevant to the reading of complex STEM...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Erin L Dolan

Institution: University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc

A growing number of studies show that participation in undergraduate research experiences (UREs), including course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs), may influence a student's persistence in science, that is, whether a student graduates from college with a science degree. However, these research experiences have been widely implemented for many years without much knowledge of the specific characteristics of the experiences that are necessary to positively influence student...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Megan Franke

Institution: University of California-Los Angeles

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Funded by the EHR Core Research Program, this project addresses the need for the development of and research about a near real-time observation tool to improve mathematics classrooms. The observation tool will provide information about the kinds of student interactions in mathematics classrooms that are known to predict student outcomes. The level of detail obtained...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Nadia Chernyak, Sara Cordes

Institutions: University of California-Irvine, Boston College

This proposal was submitted in response to EHR Core Research (ECR) program announcement NSF 19-508. The ECR program of fundamental research in STEM education provides funding in critical research areas that are essential, broad and enduring. EHR seeks proposals that will help synthesize, build and/or expand research foundations in the following focal areas: STEM learning, STEM learning environments, STEM workforce development, and broadening participation in STEM. The ECR program is...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Ming-Te Wang

Institutions: University of Pittsburgh, University of Chicago

Increasing student engagement is an explicit goal of many reform efforts that address problems of student boredom, alienation, and low achievement. To better understand the processes linked to math engagement, it is important to study the trajectories and patterns of student math engagement and differences by race and gender, the associated motivational and classroom factors, and the impact of engagement on achievement. Understanding the conditions under which classroom characteristics are most...

Effective: 2019-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Michael Young

Institutions: Iowa State University, Carnegie-Mellon University

Iowa State University (ISU) in partnership with researchers at the Education Development Center (EDC) and the University of North Carolina Charlotte will implement an NSF EHR Core Research (ECR) project to study the experiences, perspectives, and stories of successful doctoral students and recent PhDs from underrepresented groups in mathematics. The project will develop interview instruments and conduct in-depth, semi-structured interviews with four cohorts: newly accepted students, early...