STEM the Tide: Reforming Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education in America

CHAPTER 5: Mentors and High Expectations

chapter 5 Mentors and High Expectations The carver holds the unworked ivory lightly in his hand. Turning it this way and that, he whispers, “Who are you? Who hides there?” And then, “Ah, Seal!” He rarely sets out, at least consciously, to carve, say, a seal, but picks up the ivory, examines it to find its hidden form and, if that’s not immediately apparent, carves aimlessly until he sees it, humming and chanting as he works. Then he brings it out: seal, hidden, emerges. It was always there: he didn’t create it; he releases it; he helped it step forth. Carpenter, Varley, and Flaherty, Eskimo Once a student decides to attend college, we want him or her to succeed, to achieve, and to graduate. The attrition rate in America’s colleges is a national disgrace. The loss of talent represented by the attrition of STEM majors is signi ficant and disturbing. Far too many STEM students either transfer out of the sciences or drop out of college. This problem is more severe for women, students of color, and students from poverty. The achievement gap, first evident in elementary education, persists through undergraduate education. But we now have learned how to confront and close that achievement gap. The U.S. Department of Education examined the persistence of college students in STEM disciplines, drawing upon data from the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study, covering the period from 1995 to 2001.1 The researchers in this study also drew upon data from the 2003–2004 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study and from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002–2006. They reported that in 2003–2004 about 13.7 percent of undergraduates were in a STEM field, broken down as follows:2 computer/information sciences 4.9% engineering 4.2% biological/agricultural sciences 3.1% 106 s t e m t h e t i d e physical sciences 0.7% mathematics 0.5% These researchers also examined degree attainment and persistence in STEM fields as of 2001. They found that, of all students who had entered a STEM field in 1995–1996, • 37.1 percent had attained a degree or certificate in that field, • 7.5 percent were still enrolled in a STEM field, • 27.1 percent had transferred to a non-STEM field, and • 28.3 percent had dropped out of college without a degree or certificate. In this chapter, I suggest that attrition and the achievement gap are directly connected to the reward structure for faculty members and the low value placed on teaching and mentoring in many colleges and universities. I argue that the most important solution to the attrition problem is the presence of faculty mentors who hold high expectations for their students. Confronting a Culture of Exclusion Sheila Tobias devised an intriguing ethnographic experiment to discover why great numbers of very capable college students avoided science. She hired seven postgraduates from a variety of fields in the humanities and social sciences, each of whom was high-achieving and literate. All but one had avoided science totally in college, and none had selected a scientific career. These researchers were asked to audit seriously a semester-long, calculus-based course in physics or introductory chemistry. They were asked to focus on why students like themselves might find introductory science “hard” or even “alienating.” Each student was asked to keep extensive notes on his or her experiences and observations about the course, the instructor, and the material and to write a final essay drawing together those observations.3 One of these postgraduates was “Eric,” a summa cum laude graduate in literature from Berkeley. In his notes he commented on the value of cooperative study groups, which are discussed later in this chapter: “My class is full of intellectual warriors who will someday hold jobs in technologically-based companies where they will be assigned to teams or groups in order to collectively work on projects. [But] these people will have had no training in working collectively. In fact, their experience will have taught them to fear cooperation, and that another person’s intellectual achievement will be detrimental to their own.” Tobias notes that Eric thought that one consequence of students’ doing their work “in private” m e n t o r s a n d h i g h e x p e c t a t i o n s 107 was “the absence...