Multidisciplinary Preparation and Exposure to Multiple Career Pathways amongst STEM Graduate Students Gina A. Garcia Christopher B. Newman Josephine A. Gasiewski Higher Education Research Institute UCLA ASHE Annual Conference Indianapolis, IN November, 2010

Problem When it comes to grad studies, I think, one question that needs to be asked is, do students feel like they're offered a variety of opportunities …how flexible is your program towards allowing you to choose other career paths? Is your program flexible in light of today's realities for scientists? (Ethan, Latino, PWI, Neuroscience)

Background Recent studies have indicated that:  The academic job market for tenure-track faculty positions is limited  Graduate students are discouraged from exploring careers outside of academia  Graduate students are given limited exposure to multiple career opportunities (Golde & Dore, 2001; NAGPS, 2001; Nyquist, 2002)

Research Questions  In what ways are STEM graduate students exposed to and trained for academic and non- academic careers?  How does the climate in STEM graduate programs promote and/or inhibit exploration of careers outside of academia?

Student Sample  41 focus groups from December 2009 to April 2010  60 hours of interviews  7 universities across United States 3 PWIs, 3 HSIs, 1 HBCU  150 masters/doctoral students

Student Sample RACE/ETHNICITY  35% African American  21% White  25% Latino/a  9% Asian Americans  5% Native American  5% who marked other GENDER/AGE  50% women  average age 27.5  (range of 21-53) GRAD MAJOR  71 chemistry or biology  36 engineering  25 social sciences  18 other sciences

Methodology  Interpretive & descriptive design  Purposeful sampling  Semi-structured focus group protocol  Development of coding architecture NVivo 8 qualitative software Inter-coder reliability ~85% 24 codes, 111 primary sub-codes, and 86 secondary sub-codes Linked responses with student attributes

Presentation of findings THEMES  Exposure to multiple career pathways  Varying degrees of acceptance of career choices

Exposure to multiple career pathways POSITIVE My advisor talks about different opportunities that come with the Ph.D. You can go professional or you can go to academics. So she’s really trying to get me the most information she can give me. (Avery, Native American, HSI, Biology)

Exposure to multiple career pathways NEGATIVE I don’t think my advisor has the tools to tell me how to do something non-academic, or anyone in our department, for that matter….I mean, I think in theory they say, “Oh, if you don’t want to do an R1, you know, that’s open.” [But] I don’t think they know how. (Kennedy, African American, PWI, Political Science)

Exposure to multiple career pathways NEGATIVE I could very well go through the program without teaching at all. And I’m just kind of like, oh, my goodness, I don’t know what I’m going to do. That’s going to look bad if I haven't taught. And the general reaction has been, “don’t worry about it. You’re a people person. You’ll figure it out.” (Megan, African American, PWI, Political Science)

Varying degrees of acceptance POSITIVE It doesn’t particularly matter to my advisor if you tell her you want to do industry or a post- doc, but she kind of wants to know earlier… so she can start thinking about what type of industry connections she has….she [just wants] to [be] prepared and be ready to make those recommendations or to put your name in when [you’re ready]. (Cooper, African American, PWI, Chemistry)

Varying Degrees of Acceptance NEGATIVE I made the howling mistake of mentioning that once I finished my PhD I was interested in teaching high school biology, at which point everyone decided, ‘Well, you don’t need a PhD so why are you still here?’ [My advisor told me] everything’s going [to be] fine but my committee sidelined me with, “Well, your project’s not going where we thought it was going and you don’t need a PhD anyway so we think you should leave [with] the Master’s. (Mia, White, PWI, Cell & Molecular Biology)

Discussion  Should there be changes in STEM doctoral training? Changes may: allow students to more readily expand their career options allow students to follow their internal-personal motivations better relationships between students and faculty increase the overall retention and graduation rates of students

Implications  STEM Departments Prestige from tenure-track faculty placements Practicality of training students for different tracks  Governmental Funding Agencies Maximize the return on investment  Industry Partnerships with universities

Contact Information Faculty and Co-PIs Sylvia Hurtado Mitchell Chang Postdoctoral Scholars Kevin Eagan Josephine Gasiewski Administrative Staff Aaron Pearl Graduate Research Assistants Christopher Newman Minh Tran Jessica Sharkness Gina Garcia Felisha Herrera Cindy Mosqueda Juan Garibay Tanya Figueroa Papers and reports are available for download at: Project Acknowledgments: This study was made possible by the support of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, NIH Grant Numbers 1 R01 GMO and R01 GMO as well as the National Science Foundation, NSF Grant Number This independent research and the views expressed here do not indicate endorsement by the sponsors.