EAGER: Factors Affecting the Emerging Development of Science and Engineering Scholars

University Of Oregon Eugene, Eugene OR

Investigators

Abstract

This Early-Concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) will support a project that will examine a series of educational determinants that impact early demonstrated success for emerging science and engineering (S&E) scholars and assess the impacts of early research funding and training on longer-term outcomes that include employment and research productivity. The project will extend theoretical discussions focused on science and innovation policy by directing attention to an integral yet overlooked population of the S&E workforce, emerging graduate student scholars. It will trace these individuals over time to examine the factors that lead to early-demonstrated success and longer-term outcomes of both research and development (R&D) funding and prestige. The project will provide evidence to assess relationships among R&D funding, innovation, and employment, and the databases brought together will enable future research regarding the value of external funding and prestige across S&E-related career trajectories. The investigators will bring together data about individuals who have been awarded Graduate Research Fellowships and those given honorable mention for those fellowships by the National Science Foundation, data about graduate school departments from the National Research Council's Data-Based Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States, and individual-level data drawn from publicly available curriculum vitae and resumes to examines a series of antecedents and outcomes that help define success among emerging S&E scholars. The investigators will draw upon data collected by the NSF National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) in order to identify a crosswalk of a unique university-department identifier to facilitate the construction and analysis of two new datasets based on academic institutional research activity. This EAGER-supported project responded to a Dear College Letter issued by the NSF Science of Science and Innovation Policy (SciSIP) Program designed to facilitate the use of STAR METRICS, NCSES, and other databases in order to evaluate relationships among science funding, employment, and outcome metrics.