An undergraduate STEM interdisciplinary research program factors predictive of students’ plans for careers in STEM

Abstract

In a year-long undergraduate research program, life science majors were paired with majors in the other STEM disciplines of computer science, engineering, mathematics and physical sciences, to work on interdisciplinary life science projects. Typical teams had one undergraduate in a life science and one from another STEM discipline, along with faculty and graduate student mentors from each of those disciplines. In a survey at the end of the program, undergraduates indicated their career plans: 74% staying in STEM, 26% moving to non-STEM, with most of the latter in healthcare. In the summer phase, the average and range of the total number of interactions between undergraduates and all of their mentors was about the same for students in both career groups. However, students differed in whether they tended to interact more frequently with mentors in their own discipline, or to interact with closer to equal frequency with mentors in both disciplines. Binary logistic regression analysis showed this differential frequency of interaction with mentors by discipline to be predictive of students’ career decisions, with students in the non-STEM career group interacting much more within their own discipline and the students in the STEM career group tending to interact almost as frequently with mentors in both disciplines. Analysis also showed that, compared to students who planned on non-STEM  careers, those who planned on STEM careers self-reported lower ease of communication with team members but higher ratings for their program experience. Consistent with national data, the student’s area of study was predictive: 56% of the life science and 91% of the other STEM majors planned for STEM careers. However, inconsistent with the predominance of men in the STEM workforce, in our program where there were almost equal numbers of men and women in both the life sciences and other STEM fields, 72 percent of men and 76 percent of women indicated their intention to pursue careers in STEM.