Boosting Science Motivation and Biomedical Research Career Pursuits: A Study of Targeted Interventions for Students and Instructors

About This Grant

Project Summary Community colleges can play a significant role in diversifying the biomedical workforce in the United States. Over 40% of all undergraduate students are enrolled at community colleges with 56% of them reporting as first-generation students and almost half indicating they are from racially marginalized backgrounds. However, community college students are less likely to persist in STEM majors, transfer to baccalaureate institutions, and earn postsecondary STEM credentials. This trend is more pronounced among students from backgrounds underrepresented in STEM (e.g., female, first-generation, Black, Latine and Indigenous students). One way to combat this unfortunate pattern is to take a systemic approach and focus on creating more motivationally- supportive learning environments for students. This project aims to do this by leveraging the power of utility- value interventions at two levels of the community college system: the student and the instructor. Utility-value interventions are grounded in Expectancy-Value-Cost theory, which suggests that students persist in academic tasks when they expect to succeed, find value in the tasks (i.e., identify utility-value), and perceive minimal costs associated with them. These interventions typically focus on helping students see the relevance of their coursework through reflective writing activities and have proven to be particularly effective for supporting the motivation and achievement of students from historically underserved backgrounds. The instructor version of these interventions is designed to train educators in practices that highlight the real-world applications of course topics, thereby making science education more relevant and engaging for students. Combining these interventions across the student and instructor levels is expected to have a synergistic effect. That is, the project team hypothesizes that by targeting both students' perceptions of value (i.e., implementing a student- focused utility-value intervention) and the instructional environment (i.e., implementing an instructor-focused utility-value intervention), students will experience a significant boost in motivation and academic performance. The study will employ a 2 (student level intervention vs. control) by 2 (faculty level intervention vs. control) factorial design across 13 community colleges within the Tennessee Board of Regents system. This design will allow for the examination of each intervention's individual effects and their combined impact on outcomes. The longitudinal nature of the study will track students' academic progress from their initial enrollment at community college through graduation and transfer to 4-year institutions, thereby providing insights into the sustainability of intervention effects. This research fills a critical gap by focusing on the understudied population of community college students and seeks to create scalable, sustainable interventions that can be adopted across various educational settings. Findings are expected to inform educational practices and policies aimed at supporting more equitable outcomes in STEM education and a more diverse biomedical research workforce.