What makes high school students want to be interested in science, technology, engineering and math? And what motivates them to pursue careers in these fields?
Three Northeastern University faculty members at Graduate School of Education have received a grant from National Science Foundation to answer these questions. They will focus, in particular, on women and underrepresented minorities, which are groups disproportionately employed in the fields known collectively as STEM.
Women held only 24 percent of STEM jobs in 2015, according to the US Department of Commerce. African-American and Hispanic workers also continue to be underrepresented in the STEM workforce, according to Pew Research Institute.
Attracting more students from these groups could help meet the demand for skilled workers in the STEM fields highlighted by the Bureau of Labor Statisticswhich in 2017 projected 2.6 million STEM jobs in the 10-year period between 2014 and 2024.
To investigate why students are interested in STEM, Northeastern researchers will study an educational program in Overland Park, Kansas, that prepares students for their careers. High school juniors and seniors who attend the program immerse themselves in fields that interest them and are in high demand. Students work on projects that are similar to what they would do as workers in these industries.
The program, called Blue Valley Center for Advanced Professional Studies, helps students identify fields they may want to continue exploring in college and after graduation. The researchers will evaluate how well the program prepares students for careers specifically in STEM, and then share how their work can be used to evaluate similar programs in other public school districts in the United States.
The center is part of an initiative Northeastern launched in 2017 to create new partnerships between K-12 schools and higher education institutions interested in experiential education. The initiative, called Network for Experiential Teaching and Learninghelps educators and community groups collaborate on ways to improve experiential education and make it more accessible to students.
“As we think about the development of experiential learning and its scaling in K-12 and higher education, we want to look at a model more closely to understand how it really works pedagogically and how it leads students to become more interested in STEM and pursue careers STEM,” he says Corliss Thompsonassociate professor at Northeastern leading the study, which is funded by a two-year, $397,785 grant.
of the Northeast Program alignment is another example of how the university is helping to increase student interest in and access to STEM careers. The program provides students who did not study computer science in college or have no programming experience the opportunity to earn a master's degree in computer science.
Thompson says few published studies have evaluated public school experiential learning programs, in which students work on STEM-oriented projects for companies. Conducts the study in collaboration with Kelly Connassociate professor at Northeastern, and Elizabeth Zulickassistant professor at the university.
Researchers will travel to Kansas to observe the program and conduct focus groups with students, teachers, school administrators, alumni, and industry professionals working with the program. They will use the data collected from their observations and focus groups to create surveys that will be given to students and alumni.
Each semester, approximately 600 high school students participate in the Blue Valley Center for Advanced Professional Studies program. Students typically spend two and a half hours of their school day in the program.
Each student in the program chooses a topic to focus on per semester. Areas of focus are life sciences. engineering; health care and medicine; human services; a combination of business, technology and media. and entrepreneurship. Students continuing the program for a second semester or longer may either study the same subject in greater depth the following semester or choose a different area of study.
Corey Mohn, executive director of the Blue Valley Center for Advanced Professional Studies, says “the hallmark of the program is the direct connection to industry.” For their projects, students have conducted market research for a product or industry, built a drill prototype for an industrial engineering company, and designed a new logo for a company.
The center began in 2009, and since then similar programs have been launched in 98 school districts in 13 states and at the American School of Mumbai in Mumbai, India. Mohn says now is the right time for a research study to validate aspects of the program that have been successful and also shed light on ways the program can be improved.
“I'm really excited about what this could mean in terms of the next iteration of our model and staying on the cutting edge,” says Mohn.
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