Measuring and Visualizing STEM Pathways

Indiana University, Bloomington IN

Investigators

Abstract

There is a strong interest across the U.S. to understand how students enter, exit and persist in pathways toward science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) degrees and careers. However, we still do not have a very strong understanding of how students enter into STEM, how they persist and why they follow certain paths to a degree or career in these technical fields. This study proposes to add to our knowledge of how students proceed in two key areas: high school course taking and the higher education to career transition. Additionally, the project seeks to create data tools that will make it easier for educators, researchers and policymakers to visualize pathways and identify groups of individuals pursuing specific paths and to share key findings with the public through a simple interface and intuitive visualizations. The research will use data on students and the workforce collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). These datasets will be used to identify current and past trends in high school student course-taking patterns and allow for making a prediction about the number of students who will pursue STEM in college and university based on these patterns. By using nationally representative data collected by the federal government to investigate these issues across groups based on age, sex, minority status and disability status, the results will provide the ability for critical comparisons of differences in pathways and highlight possible opportunities for intervention. The completed data tool modules will be made available and maintained as part of the NSF-funded Sci2Tool.