CAREER: Using Multimedia Digital Technology to Advance Understanding of the Achievement Motivation and the Life Stories of Successful African American Scientists

Howard University, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

The primary goal of the proposed project is to use digital technology to construct the life stories of successful African American STEM professors at Howard University, the largest producer of African American STEM Ph.D.s in the nation, in order to develop psychological theory about motivation and achievement. It can be argued that, within the field of psychology, research on the achievement motivation of African Americans has failed to yield consistent support for existing achievement motivation theories, suggesting that new achievement motivation theory development is warranted. Although life stories have been widely used in psychology to understand complex self and identity processes, life stories have not been used to generate new knowledge about the achievement motivation of African Americans, a group for whom identity, particularly identity related to race, is extremely complex and not well understood. The proposed project will be carried out using an integrated education and research model developed by the investigator to cultivate synergistic and sustained research collaborations between electrical engineering and psychology researchers at Howard University. A multimedia digital technology research and learning laboratory will be established. Within this research and learning laboratory, engineering and psychology faculty and students will collaborate on the development of new life story data collection, processing, analysis, and dissemination. This model is structured not only to facilitate an increase in understanding of the achievement motivation and life stories of African Americans in STEM, but also advance the research and mentoring training of graduate and undergraduate students at Howard University. Moreover, it is a model that can be replicated within other institutions, disciplines, and research projects. Among the potential broad impacts of the project is the development of research instrumentation, analysis, and findings, which will be disseminated in peer review engineering and psychology journals. In addition, plans call for the life stories to be disseminated broadly to teachers, parents, and educators through the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) and will be archived at the Howard University Moorland Spingarn Research Center (MSRC) for use by scholars who study African Americans. Collectively, the integrated education and research activities of the project will build a firm foundation for the early career development of the investigator and would facilitate the establishment of a national center of research on African American success in science at Howard University.