This tagline comes from the PBS website, The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers. The website would be a wonderful resource for STEM undergraduates who don’t have a good grasp of what it means to be a scientist. It also debunks the discouraging stereotype of scientists as nerdy, social misfits, who will never have interesting… Read more »
For those attending the American Library Association Conference this year, save Monday, June 30, 8:30 – 10 am to attend a panel session directly related to this blog. “Sticking with STEM: How the Academic Library Can Help to Retain Successful Students” is being sponsored by the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Science and Technology… Read more »
In the 1997 landmark study, Talking about Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences by Seymour and Hewitt, 75% of students who switched to non-STEM majors identified “inadequate advising or help with academic problems” as a concern (p.33). Interestingly, 52% of undergraduates who stayed in STEM majors had the same concern. Individual interviews and focus groups… Read more »
In considering how academic librarians might increase retention among science undergraduates, it is important to remember the impact of community colleges on retention. Lloyd and Eckhardt reported in Science Educator that more than half of students receiving bachelor’s and master’s degrees in science in 2004 had attended community college at some point (p.33). Knowing the… Read more »
The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published a lengthy article entitled, “The STEM Crisis: Reality or Myth?” Various experts in science policy and labor trends contributed their views, and in the end, I was left wondering whether I should even continue this blog. But then I started reading a major study of STEM majors… Read more »
I owe my understanding of chemistry to dedicated teaching assistants (TAs), who patiently worked with me when I was confused. Sometimes they seemed more accessible than faculty, and that may be a common perception among undergraduates. A 2012 study by Kendall and Schussler found that undergraduates taking biology courses perceived TAs as being “approachable, understanding,… Read more »
Introductory biology courses are full of bright, enthusiastic students who want to be doctors someday. But when they get their first exams back with scores below 80, their dreams of medical school start to fade. The New York Times article, “Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard),” reports that 40% of… Read more »
It’s unlikely that we can directly, and certainly not singlehandedly, impact retention in the STEM disciplines. Emmons and Wilkinson are right on the money in the conclusions of their 2011 study, “The Academic Library Impact on Student Persistence.” They find a positive correlation between the ratio of professional library staff to students and retention when… Read more »
More specifically, how can U.S. academic libraries help retain undergraduates in the science majors? That’s the topic I’ll be exploring in this blog, and I hope you’ll join me in the undertaking. It’s widely known in U.S. higher education there are not enough science majors “in the pipeline” to meet the needs of an increasingly… Read more »
