John Horan - US grants

Intellectual Merit
The study is addressing the question of whether deliberate resilience training "delivered via the Internet" can strengthen women doctoral students' persistence in physical sciences, engineering and mathematics, fields where women display high rates of attrition even as their numbers in doctoral programs have continued to rise. An internet-based, multimedia-enhanced program is being developed and evaluated for its effectiveness in reducing attrition and strengthening career aspirations and personal skills of female doctoral students in selected fields at multiple universities. Grounded in the literatures of career development, self-efficacy, and empirically supported interventions and instructional tools, the set of personal and psychosocial skills are addressed as "resilience skills" and the psycho-educational strategy to strengthen these skills as "resilience training."
The courseware is designed to inoculate participants against documented interpersonal, climate, and role challenges women face in male-dominated STEM fields. It uses interactive critical incident technology to create an audio-visual library of narratives by prominent senior women scientists and engineers who have handled such situations successfully. It provides training in specific coping skills, including decision-making, problem solving, cognitive restructuring, conflict management, negotiation, and communication.
Based on comparisons both with control conditions and estimated persistence baselines by discipline, the training will be evaluated on measures of personal competence such as coping self-efficacy and interpersonal skills, reports of intentions to achieve the doctorate and enter STEM careers, and records of academic persistence and degree completion. An expert advisory council drawn from the national science, engineering, and educational research communities is augmenting the expertise of the PIs.
Broader Impacts
This project is providing a potential new tool for broadening participation among women seriously under-represented in STEM. It has the potential to reach all of the thousands of women who are in STEM doctoral programs across the nation. Evidence of effectiveness will inform practice for IGERTS and other doctoral reform initiatives. More broadly research results will be disseminated through professional and disciplinary associations such as the ASEE, AWIS, WEPAN, SWE, American Psychological Association, American Psychological Society, American Educational Research Association, and Council of Graduate Schools, and through National Academy networks and those associated with IGERT, PFF, and CID, and through publications in appropriate journals such as Journal of Engineering Education, Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, the Psychology of Women Quarterly, and the Journal of Higher Education. This web-based intervention is easily and inexpensively scalable, and capable of adaptation.

This project will apply research discoveries by launching the development of a first-of-its-kind, economical, and rapidly scaleable new web-based tool for schools, universities, and families to use in encouraging young women to 1) persevere in studying science, mathematics, and engineering, and 2) hold fast in their ambition to build careers in these fields. The project will disseminate both research and the tool that makes it useable for practitioners by allying with activities sponsored by CRESMET--Arizona State University's Center for Research on Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology. A previously developed taxonomy--Women in STEM Studies and Careers (WISSC) Taxonomy--will be used as a basis for the web tool. The tool will contain links from the issues listed in the taxonomy of barriers and supports, to information in written, audio, and video formats that will illustrate context, enhance the understanding of each issue, and provide extensive intervention information for educators, parents and family, peers, and girls and women themselves. The WISSC web tool will be developed as a part of the Virtual Counseling Center now housed in CRESMET and disseminated to all educators in Arizona as well as nationwide.

Intellectual merit-- The development of the proposed web tool will facilitate broad dissemination of major findings from the results of NSF-sponsored research focusing on young women and STEM careers. It will educate professionals, parents, and girls on some of the challenges facing girls and women pursuing STEM careers, and organize this information so that it can be easily accessed and used by providing direct connections from information to interventions. The web tool will provide a useful bridge between practitioners and the research literature that will enhance the abilities of educators, parents and young women to access and make use of information and interventions informed by research.

Broader impacts-- Through existing networks at ASU, 60,000+ teachers, counselors, and school leaders in the state of Arizona will be reached. Allying with CRESMET and the national network of collaborators the center leverages through currently operating MSP and TPC funded projects will enable the national dissemination of the WISSC tool, its foundational taxonomy, and the new knowledge created by researching and evaluating its impact on young women and those who advise and mentor them.