The underrepresentation of minority students in STEM fields is a national concern. Underrepresentation in doctoral enrollment is exacerbated by the fact that attrition rates from doctoral programs are high (40-50%), and minorities tend to complete at even lower rates than their counterparts. Such high rates of attrition impose significant economic, psychological, and social costs on individuals and society. Quite apart from these costs, we are faced with an aging STEM faculty and non-academic workforce that will need to be replaced. NSF's Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program aims to address this problem of underrepresentation in doctoral education and the academic workforce. Evaluations of the AGEP program have indicated that the numbers of underrepresented minority students enrolling in STEM doctoral programs have increased over time at institutions that received funding through the AGEP program, but the research conducted to date has not tied the activities and initiatives of AGEP institutions to student success, particularly completion rates. Since the activities and initiatives of the AGEP grantees vary considerably across institutions, it is not clear which of these interventions have the most potential to positively impact doctoral completion rates for underrepresented minority students. The project outlined in this proposal aims to examine patterns of completion and attrition among underrepresented minorities in STEM doctoral programs across a diverse set of AGEP and non-AGEP institutions with a view to understanding the factors that promote successful completion and the policies and practices that hold promise in this regard. The project builds on work already underway at the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) on Ph.D. completion and attrition and master's completion and attrition and extends it to include a much more fine-grained investigation of underrepresented minorities? experiences in STEM doctoral programs. Twenty institutions will be selected through a competitive process to provide de-identified student-level completion and attrition data for all underrepresented minority students entering all STEM doctoral programs at the participating institutions from 1992-93 through 2011-12 utilizing the methodology developed for the Ph.D. Completion Project and refined in the project's successor, Completion and Attrition in STEM Master's Programs. Participating institutions will also be required to administer surveys to underrepresented minority students to gather information on factors related to completion and attrition; to provide detailed data on activities and initiatives funded through the AGEP program, the Ph.D. Completion Project, and other sources, that may have impacted completion and attrition; and to facilitate access to faculty, administrators, and students during site visits designed to collect in-depth information on program policies, practices, and climate, and the perceived impact of these factors on completion and attrition. Intellectual merit : The research findings from this project will provide a rich and compelling portrait of the experiences, academic progress, stumbling blocks, and perceptions of underrepresented minorities enrolled in STEM doctoral programs in a variety of AGEP and non-AGEP institutions across the nation. Findings will inform NSF and the larger higher education community on how best to support these graduate students in diverse contexts so they successfully complete their doctoral programs and are fully acculturated in the norms and cultures of their disciplines, capable of mentoring and teaching the next generation of researchers and scholars, as well as driving future discovery in their fields. Broader impacts: CGS is uniquely positioned to undertake this effort in terms of its research capacity, current data collection efforts, and experience studying completion and attrition, as well as its ability to influence the larger world of graduate education. Collectively, CGS institutions annually award nearly 95% of all U.S. doctorates and more than three-quarters of all U.S. master's degrees. CGS disseminates its findings in a variety of ways, including published reports, newsletter articles, press releases, seminars, workshops, and annual conferences. As such, this project has the potential to have an extensive impact on improving participation, retention, and completion of underrepresented minorities in STEM doctoral programs in AGEP and non-AGEP institutions across the nation.
