Project Summary
Many students enter college with an interest in studying science, but ultimately pursue other
majors. Others graduate with a science major, but fail to enter or remain in the biomedical
workforce. The many pathways out of science contribute to shortages in the biomedical
workforce, particularly among women, underrepresented minorities (URMs), and first-generation
(FG) college students. What is often missing in the study of persistence in biomedical fields is a
consideration of the psychological mechanisms involved in persistence and an understanding of
how to design experiences or institutional supports around such mechanisms. My research
program addresses this gap by examining persistence in the biomedical fields using a
psychological lens, with a focus on motivational trajectories and contextual supports.
Over the next 5 years, I will focus on two key open questions: (1) What developmental patterns
of motivational beliefs are adaptive for persistence in biomedical career pathways and do
adaptive patterns vary across individuals with different characteristics (e.g., URM, FG,
Gender)?, and (2) How can we improve contextual supports during college, focusing on
motivational beliefs as a mediating mechanism, in order to retain more individuals on biomedical
career pathways, especially those from underrepresented groups? This MIRA application aims
to leverage and extend my extensive multi-site, multi-method longitudinal research by
continuing quantitative and qualitative longitudinal data collection as research participants reach
the next phases in their career pathways (immediately after college and >5 years after college)
from two unique university samples: (1) large, land-grant public university (Michigan State
University, N = 1735; 57% Female; 11% URM; 12% FG) and (2) elite, private university (Duke,
N = 2546; 54% Female; 19% URM; 9% FG). Additionally, to extend the generalizability of these
findings to a third unique university context and to flexibly pursue research questions based on
findings from the original cohorts, data collection will be extended to Old Dominion University, a
public, minority-serving institution (41% URM, 28% FG). Finally, an alternative approach for
addressing persistence in biomedical fields will be pursued, namely examining how training
future faculty to support student motivation and engagement in the context of enriched curricular
opportunities relates to their later approaches to supporting student motivation and
engagement. IMPACT: This on-going research program will provide key insights into the types
of contextual supports and psychological mechanisms that are needed to encourage
persistence in biomedical science careers, especially among women, URMs, and FGs.
