STEM undergraduate education research has developed over the past decades to include numerous frameworks that support rigorous evaluation and dissemination of undergraduate science education approaches. By contrast, STEM graduate education research has not yet developed sufficient frameworks (e.g., journals, conferences). This has led to inefficient dissemination of evidence-based approaches and challenges for implementation of effective practices. This National Science Foundation award to the University of Massachusetts Medical School will support a workshop that will seed action to develop resources and frameworks for disseminating evidence-based educational approaches for doctoral STEM education, with a particular focus on effective practices for PhD career development, a rapidly growing field within graduate education that has urgent dissemination needs. The workshop will serve to cultivate a multi-stakeholder community with shared concerns, a passion for graduate education, and a desire to advance educational practices that enhance the career preparedness of PhD scientists. The priorities and next steps identified through this workshop will seed future initiatives and enable STEM doctoral programs to more effectively and efficiently address the training needs for the next generation of scientists.
The one-and-a-half-day workshop will focus on an area that is consistently highlighted as a need in national reports on STEM graduate education, but which has received little attention: the lack of a national infrastructure for coordinating and curating dissemination of materials supporting innovative doctoral educational models. The workshop will bring together stakeholders with expertise spanning dissemination, evaluation, career development, and graduate education, to define actionable next steps for enhancing the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based educational approaches for PhD career development. This workshop will use panel presentations, stakeholder-focused group discussions, mixed-expertise small group discussions, and full group report-outs to define the most critical issues and recommended actions for dissemination of evidence-based practices. The workshop will generate a list of the needs, challenges, and barriers to dissemination and implementation of educational models, informed by the diverse viewpoints of key stakeholder groups, and will identify a list of recommended next steps, including how each stakeholder group can contribute to enhancing evaluation and dissemination of approaches. The workshop will result in a report synthesizing findings, including actionable next steps focused on individual, stakeholder group, and national efforts. This report will help stakeholders take informed action in a coordinated manner to avoid redundancy and amplify investments.
This proposal is funded by the NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program. The NRT Program (17-585/18-507) is designed to encourage the development and implementation of new, potentially transformative models or approaches for STEM graduate education training that address changing workforce and research needs.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
