Occasionally I see online comments challenging the supposed need for more STEM graduates. These writers point to a shortage of good-paying STEM positions for graduates entering the workforce. They may need to rethink their arguments. The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce recently published, “Good Jobs Are Back: College Graduates Are First in… Read more »
Premedical students hate organic chemistry. It’s true. While preparing a poster for the Medical Library Association Annual Conference, I did a literature review of barriers to retention for undergraduates in premedical programs. I expected premeds to name required science courses beyond biology – chemistry, physics, and mathematics. However, I didn’t expect organic chemistry to be… Read more »
Last month my first response was outrage when I read Sir Tim Hunt’s remarks about “girls” disrupting science in mixed gender labs by making men fall in love with them and crying when they are criticized. No wonder female undergraduates feel out-of-place and even unwanted in the STEM disciplines, I thought. As a woman who… Read more »
We all know that STEM retention is not a simple, linear system that can be fixed instantly with one or two modifications. A brave team of international researchers has taken on the challenge of modeling what the system of STEM retention might look like using data from first-year engineering students at a European university…. Read more »
I finally found it – a publication in which a librarian is involved in a STEM retention initiative! The journal, College Teaching, published “Embedding Multiple Literacies into STEM Curricula” by Soules et al. in 2014. A team of six STEM faculty and one STEM librarian took… Read more »
Recently The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that under 30% of Americans are science literate. You read that right – over 70% of us are science illiterate. Half of the country thinks that humans were rubbing elbows with dinosaurs. In “Teaching Science So It Sticks,” Dan Berrett describes some of the efforts universities are making… Read more »
Guest blogger: Laura Palumbo Chemistry & Physics Librarian/Science Data Specialist Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ laura.palumbo@rutgers.edu @LauraBPalumbo ________________ The recent post in this blog on the lack of self-efficacy of women in STEM reflects the findings of much of the current literature: that women tend to underestimate their abilities in math and related STEM fields. … Read more »
Most of us have heard about self-efficacy being key to academic persistence. But have you heard about “tinkering and technical self-efficacy”? These are important aspects of self-efficacy for engineering students. Unfortunately, there are large populations of potential engineering students who lack belief in their competence in these areas. In a 1997 study of STEM students… Read more »
Apparently English and history majors aren’t the only students quizzed by relatives and friends about what type of work they expect to find after graduation. Undergraduate females majoring in mathematics report in a recent study that they are frequently questioned about career options in mathematics, and even worse, they aren’t sure what the options are…. Read more »
The CIRTL Network is “committed to advancing the teaching of STEM disciplines in higher education.” To improve STEM teaching, CIRTL focuses on the preparation of graduate students to become effective faculty and STEM education researchers. As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, the quality of STEM instruction is a barrier to retention for many undergraduates…. Read more »
