Collaborative Research:Community College Roots of STEM:Interactive influences of individual, secondary school, and college factors predicting the success of underrepresented groups

Despite growing demands for a technically and scientifically literate US labor force, women and members of racial/ethnic minority groups remain underrepresented in STEM careers. A major gap in the knowledge base around this phenomenon is an understanding of the different pathways that many underrepresented students take when making STEM education and career choices. For example, women and underrepresented minorities are disproportionately likely to enroll in a community college initially with the intent of transferring to a four-year institution. The proposed research will address the gap in the current research base by investigating how pathways through community colleges to four-year institutions contribute to the roots of gender and racial inequalities in those who earn STEM degrees. The study will explicitly examine the individual characteristics and educational experiences of students who started their post-secondary education in community colleges. Specifically, this multi-phased study will investigate the structural and individual factors that contribute to women and underrepresented minorities' lower probability of completing a STEM major, compared to White men.

The quantitative portion of the project will integrate data on community college students into an existing dataset (Roots 8-16 dataset). This current dataset links administrative records on students from the public schools of North Carolina from eighth grade into one of the sixteen campuses of the UNC university system. This project will add administrative records on students who transfer from community colleges into the four-year university system, thus diversifying the sample while strengthening the conclusions that may be drawn from it. This portion of the project focuses on the structural opportunities and constraints to math and science learning in middle and high school and their impact on later educational trajectories. Researchers will examine the barriers and opportunities to learning to determine whether there are differential impacts on students from various backgrounds.

The qualitative portion of the study consists of a series of interviews with community college students who have indicated a desire to transfer to a four-year university and an interest in majoring in STEM. Students will be interviewed the first year of the project and again three years later to examine their experiences and to further probe the findings from the quantitative study, including: influences on making the transition to four-year colleges and how female STEM majors navigate social structural constraints and opportunities.