Bernstein Colloquium on Women in S & E Programs: Shall I Stay or Shall I Go?
ASU Professor Bianca Bernstein reported in a CRESMET winter-series colloquium on early results from an NSF-funded project she is leading that examines whether web-based training can help women build the resilience they need to persist in finishing STEM degrees and to go on to careers in academia and industry.
Titled CareerBound, the project is a three-year, experimental evaluation of a set of interventions designed to reduce attrition and strengthen career aspirations and personal skills among female doctoral students in STEM fields at multiple universities.
The interventions will include a newly created library of videotaped interviews with successful STEM women organized around “critical incident” themes, and a bank of on-line courseware designed to build three sorts of important coping skills—
- stress inoculation training (practicing coping skills with simulated stressors to prepare a person for dealing with real-life challenges)
- decision-making and problem-solving
- cognitive restructuring (changing how a person feels about a stressor)
While universities nationwide have attempted to change—and as the CareerBound investigators stress, must continue to change—what is often described as a “chilly climate" for women in research science and engineering labs, Bernstein’s project aims to support female doctoral students in developing specific coping skills that will enable them to successfully face the challenges they may meet in male-dominated research fields.
New On-Line Tools
The project will develop a unique, searchable on-line database of video interviews with successful female scientists and engineers. The women will describe how they dealt with incidents that research identifies as common discouragements to female students in traditionally masculine doctoral programs such as engineering and mathematics.
Another unique feature of CareerBound is that it will offer skill-building counseling interventions on-line, rather than in more costly and less convenient face-to-face formats.
If effective, the CareerBound tools could be a powerful, cost-effective supplement to academic preparation given their unique durability, scalability, and suitability for customization and improvement. The tools will reside in the Virtual Counseling Center on the CRESMET website. The VCC is a research-based design of ASU Professor of Counseling Psychology John Horan.
The Researchers
Bernstein is principal investigator on the project. Her co-PIs include Horan, as well as—
- Professor Mary Anderson-Rowland, Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering
- Regents Professor Nancy Felipe Russo, Department of Psychology
Currently holding appointments in the Mary Lou Fulton College of Education, Bernstein has also served as—
- Dean, ASU Graduate College
- Director, NSF Division of Graduate Education
- Leader, ASU Preparing Future Faculty Program
- Innovator, ASU Preparing Future Professionals Program
- President, Western Association Of Graduate Schools
- Member, board and executive committee of the Council of Graduate Schools