CareerBound: Development Area -

Women have earned more than half the bachelor's degrees awarded in science and engineering since 2000 - while, just a generation ago, just 3 percent of America's scientific and technical workers were women.

Despite the growing number of women pursuing science and engineering careers today, their representation on university and college faculties and in industry settings fails to reflect these gains.

Bianca L. Bernstein and John J. Horan, professors of psychology in education within ASU's Mary Lou Fulton College of Education, and Mary Anderson Rowland, associate professor of industrial engineering within the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering, are leading a research study designed to help female doctoral students overcome the barriers that impede their persistence in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields.

This fall, their research team was awarded a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support the three-year project, "CareerBound: Internet-Delivered Resilience Training to Increase the Persistence of Women Ph.D. Students in STEM Fields."

The project is supported by an interdisciplinary research team consisting of nearly 20 students and faculty members, representing the social sciences, engineering and physical sciences, including Nancy Felipe Russo, Regents' Professor of Psychology and Women and Gender Studies, and director of ASU's Center for Academic Institutional and Cultural Change.

Studies have not found any significant biological differences between men and women in performing science and mathematics that can account for the lower representation of women in academic faculty and leadership positions in STEM fields. But climate surveys and studies conducted on university campuses across the country suggest that bias and outmoded practices governing academic success are the more likely barriers to women in STEM fields.

This reality inspired Bernstein and her colleagues to address the question of whether deliberate resilience training, delivered via the Internet, can strengthen the persistence of female students in STEM fields. The research team has begun conducting focus groups with female doctoral students in STEM majors.

"The purpose of the focus groups is to understand firsthand what today's woman doctoral student experiences as encouraging and discouraging as she progresses toward her degree," says Bernstein, who holds a joint appointment with Higher Education and Educational Policy Studies and is an affiliate of women and gender studies.

The project will examine and evaluate the effectiveness of an Internet-based, multimedia-enhanced program designed to strengthen career aspirations and personal skills, as well as increase the number of female doctoral students completing degrees in selected fields at multiple universities.

"The project courseware is being designed to inoculate participants against documented interpersonal, climate and role challenges women face in male-dominated STEM fields," Bernstein says. "Interactive critical incident technology will create an audio-visual library of narratives by prominent senior women scientists and engineers, as well as younger professionals in the field who have handled such situations successfully."

The courseware also provides training in decision-making, problem-solving, cognitive restructuring, conflict management and negotiation.

"The CareerBound program includes social support not by providing supportive groups of mentors but rather by empowering the women to seek them out," Bernstein says. "Our intervention, then, is deliberately designed to teach women to fish, along with giving them a supply of fish."

The courseware will be housed within the Virtual Counseling Center, a project led by Horan in ASU's Center for Research on Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology (CRESMET). The Virtual Counseling Center contains many research-supported resources for helping students and graduates develop life skills and career plans.

"We hope to ensure that all students and graduates have access to the best career information possible, develop decision-making and other skills associated with personal competence, and be able to overcome barriers for exploring STEM majors and careers," Horan says.

"This project advocates a novel form of social support for women as they navigate career advancement in STEM professions," says Marilyn Carlson, CRESMET's director and mathematics education professor. "The research based interventions, proposed by Professor Bernstein and her colleagues, will produce substantive increases in the number of women who persist in STEM professions and Ph.D. programs, providing much-needed human resources in areas of critical need."

Sherwood, with the Mary Lou Fulton College of Education,can be reached at (480) 965-2114 or (joan.sherwood@asu.edu).