Engineering Enrollments Research Articles

A Grand Challenge: Education and Advocacy in the New Energy World

_ This is the final article in a series of six on SPE’s Grand Challenges in Energy, formulated as the output of a 2023 workshop held by the SPE Research and Development Technical Section in Austin, Texas. Described in a JPT article last year, each of the challenges are discussed separately in this series: geothermal energy; net-zero operations; improving recovery from tight/shale resources; digital transformation; carbon capture, utilization, and storage; and education and advocacy. _ We have our work cut out for us… but then, we always have in our industry. Following the crippling effects of the oil embargo in 1973, the price of crude oil climbed high and fast to the top of the charts. That increase in crude oil value brought students to petroleum engineering programs in droves around the world. It was not just the crude; it was the value of the degree program. Students rightly saw an opportunity to work in an industry that fueled the engine of the global economy, lit their homes, warmed their food, and moved people around the continents, all reliably and affordably. The post-embargo peak in enrollment was only topped by the peak following the shale boom of the mid-2000s. After the post-embargo boom in the 1980s came the bust. Similarly, many of us were not left standing when the mid-2000 boom busted. The price of oil is climbing again; natural gas and crude oil use is up and consistently so, but the petroleum engineering enrollments are not (Fig. 1). Depending on where you started along the x-axis in your career (Fig. 1), you may already know this story. What’s different now in an industry known to be cyclical, where we’ve seen this before? If higher crude oil prices and concomitant salaries are not bringing in the students, what will? The demand for STEM graduates is high across industries, and it’s particularly acute in the oil and gas sector. The US faces a significant shortage of STEM graduates to meet the needs of critical industries. This scarcity raises concerns about our ability to fill specialized roles, such as petroleum engineering, which are crucial for the energy sector’s development over the next century. If we struggle to produce enough STEM graduates overall, how can we expect to meet the specific demands of the oil and gas industry in the coming decades? There are a few reasons for this new trend. More than half of Americans say that STEM studies are too hard and nearly a quarter believe that STEM studies are not useful for a career. The National Academies have been sounding the alarm for more than 20 years about where we are going technologically, as a nation, and who is going to get us there. Second, within STEM degrees in general, there are fewer petroleum engineering, or equivalent graduates. While additional energy types in the mix have been growing for years, the sharp move toward renewable energy and simultaneously painting hydrocarbons as undesirable is recent.

Summer bridge program characteristics and outcomes at institutions within the southeastern region of the United States

BackgroundIn response to the effort to increase minority enrollment in college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors, STEM summer bridge programs were created to help minorities with the transition from high school to college with the long-term goal of increasing the diversity of professionals in STEM. The goal of this research is to collect and examine STEM summer bridge program information for institutions in the southeastern region of the United States. The institutions chosen for review have obtained accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). The states include Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.ResultsThis study conducted a manual search via institution websites that resulted 107 non-STEM and 77 STEM summer bridge programs that have published reports as well as those who have not published reports to the extent that the information is documented and available. A survey was sent to collect information such as individual program characteristics and program goals. There were 25 non-STEM and 28 STEM summer bridge program respondents. The responses of program goals to the specific programs were compared to manual search results.ConclusionsThe results show a need for more published reports for summer bridge programs, especially ones that target incoming freshmen in the STEM majors. Comparing the program goals from the survey and the manual search resulted in inconsistencies. This can be implied that the summer bridge program websites need to be more explicit program goals and be kept up to date. By doing this, applicants can interpret the benefits of participating in the summer bridge program.

Changing Classroom Ecology to Support Continued Engineering Enrollment

Engineering requires more bachelor’s degree graduates to meet the growing demand for engineering skills globally. One way to address this demand is increasing student degree completion, which is lower than higher education in general. In particular, Black, Latino/a/x, and Indigenous (BLI) students are less likely to complete an engineering degree than their peers. BLI students experience a host of unwelcoming behaviors in engineering environments that contribute to departure without their intended degree. Improving environments to support belonging may offer one solution. Through an ecological belonging intervention, we seek to improve continued enrollment and increase belonging. Quasi-experimental methods were used in a second-semester engineering programming course. Surveys collected before and after an intervention combined with institutional data were used to test the moderation effects of the intervention on continued enrollment in engineering during the semester following the intervention. BLI students who were enrolled in intervention treatment sections were more likely to be enrolled in engineering the following fall. The intervention treatment increased belonging such that control section participants were less likely to continue to be enrolled in engineering. While research to assess the efficacy and mechanisms of the intervention is ongoing, the intervention offers promising results to address attrition, particularly for BLI students.

Improving the quality of Cambodian higher education: Key challenges and suggestions

Higher education is one of the main drivers of economic development. Due to its significant roles, many countries, including Cambodia, have invested in developing their higher education subsector. For over two decades since 1997, Cambodia has experienced a high increase in the number of higher education institutions (HEIs). Despite the rapid institutional expansion, there are many issues impeding the quality of Cambodian higher education. Drawing on secondary sources and the authors’ extensive experience and knowledge of the subsector, this article tries to investigate and explain some of the factors affecting the quality of higher education in Cambodia. The article focuses on several issues, including political interference, fragmented governance structures, ineffective ministerial policy implementation, fragmented institutional management, limited quality of teaching personnel, low academic salaries, business-oriented higher education, and issues concerning curriculum and academic programs. The article offers some suggestions to address these challenges. Key suggestions include (a) limiting political interference in appointing top university leaders, (b) setting up effective and independent higher education quality assurance bodies, (c) creating a term limit for top university leadership roles, (d) establishing a meritocracy-based policy for university leader appointments, (e) making academic salaries comparable to those of other similar professions, (f) developing policies on minimum tuition fees and student loan programs, and (g) introducing mechanisms to improve curricula and promote enrollments in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors. The article concludes with suggestions for future research.

Impact of Socio-Economic Factors on Female Students’ Enrollments in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics and Workplace Challenges in Bangladesh

There is nearly equal number of male and female student enrollments in primary and secondary level of education in Bangladesh, but at the tertiary level and at the job sector, a sharp drop in the number of women is observed. This paper explores the current status of female students’ enrollment in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) at the tertiary education system in Bangladesh. It is followed by explorations of challenges women face in technical workplace. Quantitative data for the paper come from more than 1.18 million students at tertiary level from eight public and private universities for three academic years from 2018 to 2020. In addition, a qualitative study was conducted with 48 participants in pre- and during COVID-19 eras to understand barriers hampering women in STEM-related education and jobs. The paper provides a guideline for future policies to ensure inclusive space for growth and retention for women in STEM.

Comparing success of female students to their male counterparts in the STEM fields: an empirical analysis from enrollment until graduation using longitudinal register data

BackgroundIn this paper, we investigate the predictors for enrollment and success in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) programs in higher education. We develop a sequential logit model in which students enroll in STEM education, may drop out from STEM higher education, or continue studying until they graduate in an STEM field. We use rich Dutch register data on student characteristics and high school exam grades to explain the differences in enrollment, success, and dropout rates.ResultsWe find that females are less likely to enroll in STEM-related fields, while students with higher high school mathematics grades are more likely to enroll in STEM. Female students have lower first-year dropout rates at university of applied sciences STEM programs. With respect to study success, we find that conditional on enrollment in STEM, women are less likely to graduate than men within the nominal duration or the nominal duration plus one additional year. However, female students do perform equally well as male students in terms of graduation within 10 years.ConclusionsWe conclude that STEM programs are less popular among female students and that female students are less likely to graduate on time. However, females perform equally well in STEM higher education in the long run. For this reason, policy should be geared at increasing study success in terms of nominal graduation rates among female STEM students.

Illuminating inequality in access: Variation in enrollment in undergraduate engineering programs across Virginia's high schools

AbstractBackgroundDetermining the root causes of persistent underrepresentation of different subpopulations in engineering remains a continued challenge. Because place‐based variation of resource distribution is not random and because school and community contexts influence high school outcomes, considering variation across those contexts should be paramount in broadening participation research.Purpose/HypothesisThis study takes a macroscopic systems view of engineering enrollments to understand variation across one state's public high school rates of engineering matriculation.Design/MethodThis study uses a dataset from the Virginia Longitudinal Data System that includes all students who completed high school from a Virginia public school from 2007 to 2014 (N = 685,429). We explore geographic variation in four‐year undergraduate engineering enrollment as a function of gender, race/ethnicity, and economically disadvantaged status. Additionally, we investigate the relationship between characteristics of the high school and community contexts and undergraduate engineering enrollment across Virginia's high schools using regression analysis.ResultsOur findings illuminate inequality in enrollment in engineering programs at four‐year institutions across high schools by gender, race, and socioeconomic status (and the intersections among those demographics). Different high schools have different engineering enrollment rates among students who attend four‐year postsecondary institutions. We show strong associations between high schools' engineering enrollment rates and four‐year institution enrollment rates as well as moderate associations for high schools' community socioeconomic status.ConclusionsStrong systemic forces need to be overcome to broaden participation in engineering. We demonstrate the insights that state longitudinal data systems can illuminate in engineering education research.

Technology Focus: Formation Evaluation (August 2020)

A century after the 1918 flu pandemic, much of the world in early 2020 was experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown except a few places such as parts of Northern Europe. The reduced global demand for oil was one of the main reasons that the May futures contract for West Texas Intermediate crude fell to an unbelievable low level in late April. It was indeed an unprecedented historical moment. What has this to do with petroleum engineering in general and formation evaluation in particular? A lot. In the short term, universities would experience significantly reduced enrollments in petroleum engineering and probably geoscience majors. The industry is quickly losing experienced hands and subject-matter experts; thus, activities in innovation and new technology development would suffer. Consequently, limited numbers of professionals and fewer new business impact solutions would be available when needed in the near future when the business comes back. Therefore, we must have a longer-term vision for business planning, balancing short-term challenges with long-term perspectives. This is especially true for professional retention and development. Individually and collectively, we are currently facing undeniable difficult times. But, as has been said, challenges are also opportunities. It is a proper time for all of us to pause a bit and formulate way-forward plans that suit our needs. It is surely a good time to recharge ourselves with newly emerging skills to meet the anticipated future needs through various resources such as online training and webinars offered by service providers or from professional societies such as SPE. In any case, oil will still be an irreplaceable resource that the world needs in the foreseeable future, and formation evaluation is a critical subject-matter area that the industry cannot exist without - from resources exploration, to field development, to production, all the way to abandonment. We should sharpen our tools when we can so we will not be regretful when the time of needs comes.

Socio Economic Status and Female Enrollment in Engineering and Technology Programmes in Anglo Saxon State Universities of Cameroon

Socio Economic Status and Female Enrollment in Engineering and Technology Programmes in Anglo Saxon State Universities of Cameroon

China's Pursuit of Cyberpower

China's Pursuit of Cyberpower Adam Segal (bio) China is one of the most active cyberspace players in the Asia-Pacific, developing and deploying cyber capacities in pursuit of its economic, political, and strategic objectives. Chinese computer network operations are conducted to strengthen the competitiveness of China's economy, accelerate the modernization of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), weaken opponents of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), resist international pressure and foreign ideas, and offset U.S. dominance in conventional military capabilities.1 Beijing is also aggressively supporting the indigenous innovation of emerging technologies that will give it new capabilities in cyberspace, especially 5G, artificial intelligence, and quantum information systems. Although Western governments often dismiss comments from Chinese foreign ministry officials declaring China the world's biggest victim in cyberspace as distractions and diversions, Chinese officials do in fact see their cybersecurity as weak relative to the degree of threat and the capabilities they perceive from potential adversaries, the United States in particular.2 As the July 2019 defense white paper puts it, "Cybersecurity remains a global challenge and poses a severe threat to China."3 Perhaps the clearest evidence that the leadership sees China's situation as precarious is the speed with which it has addressed what it sees as two major sources of weakness: an underdeveloped cybersecurity regulatory framework and widespread dependence on foreign technology in critical networks. Over the last five years, China has rapidly developed new cybersecurity institutions, laws, guidelines, and standards and has moved to replace foreign suppliers with domestic counterparts. [End Page 60] Both Chinese capabilities and vulnerabilities are likely to increase in the next five years. This combination of strengths and weaknesses means that China is primarily a cyberespionage threat to the Asia-Pacific. While the potential for Beijing to use more disruptive or destructive cyberattacks against an adversary in a regional conflict is high, especially against command-and-control systems, CCP leaders are likely cognizant that China is vulnerable to similar attacks. This essay introduces the range of Chinese cyberoperations and the organizational structure that supports and conducts them. It also highlights significant weaknesses in Chinese cyberdefenses, such as an underdeveloped cybersecurity industry and lack of investment and expertise. The essay concludes that the combination of the Chinese economy becoming more reliant on information and communications technologies and the PLA becoming more dependent on digital systems has resulted in Chinese leaders becoming more sensitive to China's vulnerability to cyberattacks. China's Cyberattacks The vast majority of computer attacks originating from China have targeted private-sector companies in an effort to steal intellectual property, trade secrets, and other information that could help China become more economically competitive. President Xi Jinping set a goal for China to become a "world-leading" science and technology power by 2049, and the country has significantly ramped up spending on research and development; expanded enrollment in science, technology, engineering, and mathematic disciplines at universities; and pushed specialized industrial strategies in emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, quantum research, and next-generation communication technologies. China has also, however, directed cyber industrial espionage at high-technology and advanced manufacturing companies in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Southeast Asia.4 Hackers have reportedly targeted the negotiation strategies and financial information of firms in the energy, banking, law, and pharmaceutical sectors. In an operation known as Cloud [End Page 61] Hopper, Chinese hackers, allegedly from the Ministry of State Security, breached at least a dozen cloud providers over several years, which allowed them access to data from hundreds of companies.5 The damage this theft inflicted on the victims' economies, or, conversely, how much it helped China's economy, is unknown. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence estimated in November 2015, however, that all cyber-enabled economic espionage, not just Chinese activity, costs the U.S. economy $400 billion per year.6 State-supported hackers also use cyberattacks to steal military secrets to accelerate the PLA's modernization and gather political information on agencies, institutions, and individuals that might have an impact on Beijing's foreign policy or threaten domestic stability. While Andrea and Marco Gilli have argued that the complexity of modern weapon systems makes it...

Participation of Women in Engineering & Technology Education and Employment

Engineering and Technology Education is a means to sustain and accelerate the overall development in a country and it has a direct effect on individuals’ productivity and earnings as well. But the problem is there is gender disparity in distribution especially in developing countries among educational branches. In Ethiopia, despite significant improvements in the last couple of years, women are still under-represented in engineering and technology. Since the share of Ethiopian women in science and technology programs in higher education has been low, the governments apply a policy to stream 70% of all university entrants to be in the science and technology track indirectly to increase their entry into these fields. Even if this types of policy is applying, their participation in engineering and technology education and employment is very low proportion. The main purpose of this study is an attempt to assess trends and share of women in the field of engineering and technology regarding to their share of enrollment, employment and professional positions from the period 2000 -12 based on available secondary data collected from different sources. The collected quantitative data were analyzed by using descriptive data analysis techniques. Result from the data shows that there is low share of women in engineering and technology enrollment, employment and professional position status as compared to male in the country. Even if the share of enrollment of women in higher education is on improved status, their share of enrollment in engineering and technology filed is quite low that on average below 30 percent per year. In addition, this grate disparity and low participation of women in engineering and technology invites further investigation regarding to what is the reason behind.

How Software Can "Chip In" to the IC Design Process: A Multidisciplinary Approach May Attract New Talent and Accelerate Innovation

In the face of declining electrical engineering enrollments and exploding computer science popularity, development tools and techniques from the software community, such as agile and open source flows, can breathe new life into chip design. With the pace of Moore's law slowing, there is a looming question of how chip designers can prepare for what is on the horizon. The manifestation of Moore's law over the course of many decades has resulted in billions of transistors per chip to architect, floorplan, and verify, but many of the fundamental digital building blocks have not recently changed.

Fewer Grads + More Jobs: A Winning Formula for Job Hunters

The 2019 graduating class of petroleum engineers will mark the last gasp of a boom before a steep drop in the size of future graduating classes coming out of US universities. After a class of nearly 2,000 petroleum engineering graduates next spring, the graduation rate over the next 3 years will fall to less than 1,000 per year, according to an annual survey of US petroleum engineering programs by Lloyd Heinze, a professor at Texas Tech University. The survey includes primarily US universities. The numbers are a direct reflection of the sharp downturn in oil prices that began in 2014 and caused large downsizing among oil and gas operators and service companies. For young engineers looking for jobs after college, it represents a welcome change from the rocky job market faced by graduates after the industry switched into job-cutting mode. For employers used to having their pick of the top students since the bust began in 2015, it could mean being one of several bidders for a shrinking pool of graduates. Professors on campuses are seeing signs of improvement, but they caution that the evidence is more anecdotal than numerical. “A good number of seniors have jobs and a lot do not. One thing is that it is a big senior class,” said Karsten Thompson, department chair for the petroleum engineering program at Louisiana State University (LSU). It is too early for hard numbers but “there are more companies on campus with more students having internships and job offers.” “Internships went quite well this year. It looks like the recovery is under way. Students are much more comfortable,” said Erdal Ozkan, a professor at Colorado School of Mines. The job market is much improved, said John Lee, a professor at Texas A&M who also sees improved internship opportunities. Graduating Boomers The class of 2019 is made up of the last big crop of freshman enrolled back in the fall of 2014 when the bust killed the assumption that $100/bbl oil was a given. The nearly 2,000 seniors in the 2018–2019 class is considerably smaller than the past two, which exceeded 3,200, but it is double the size of three classes that follow. Texas Tech has 77 seniors now, compared with a peak total of 227 in 2014, and only 43 juniors following them. The junior class is 80% lower than the 2015 peak. That drop is an indication of Texas Tech’s decision not to limit petroleum engineering enrollment during the boom—only a few schools including Texas A&M and the University of Texas capped enrollment—and the quick reactions of a “population of students and parents who were faster to realize the downturn” because so many live in West Texas where the industry is all around them. Between the boom in the early 1980s—where schools provided a generation’s worth of exploration and production professionals—and the recent boom that produced many more grads, was a long, deep slump.

Laura Micheletti Puaca. Searching for Scientific Womanpower: Technocratic Feminism and the Politics of National Security, 1940–1980. xiii + 261 pp., illus., bibl., index. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. $34.95 (paper).

Laura Micheletti Puaca. <i>Searching for Scientific Womanpower: Technocratic Feminism and the Politics of National Security, 1940–1980</i>. xiii + 261 pp., illus., bibl., index. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. $34.95 (paper).

Student Attraction, Persistence and Retention in STEM Programs: Successes and Continuing Challenges

Low student enrollment and high attrition rates in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education are major challenges in higher education. Many STEM entrants end-up switching their majors to non-STEM fields, perform poorly relative to their peers in other programs, and/or drop out of college without earning any academic qualification. Therefore, it is important to examine strategies for reducing attrition in STEM programs. This paper reviews the major factors impeding student interest, success, and persistence in STEM programs, and current institutional practices aimed at addressing these issues. Suggested institutional strategies to improve persistence in STEM programs and their implications that are discussed in this paper include: provision of orientation programs, adoption of early warning systems, Mathematics review sessions, creation of student learning communities, professional development of faculty, as well as collaborative and outreach programs. It is hoped that this review will encourage debate toward solving the major challenges facing STEM education.

Two-year colleges teach physics to widening range of students

Increasingly, partnerships ease the way to transfer to universities.Increasingly, partnerships ease the way to transfer to universities.

Deja vu for Petroleum Engineers: A Cautionary Tale

What’s Ahead–From TWA’s Editor-in-Chief I remember my first year in the industry very fondly: it was 2006, oil prices had been climbing steadily for over half a decade, and the “big crew change” was starting to become dinner table discussion. The brain drain that would eventually come from the retirement of senior employees was imminent, experts advised, and it seemed like companies were taking advantage of the good times to hire like crazy as they positioned themselves to hedge the effect on their operations. I vividly remember a recruitment event organized by a large independent during the ATCE for which they rented the entire Sea World theme park in San Antonio and threw a party for us. It was an extraordinarily memorable event for any impressionable recent grad, and the future seemed prosperous. The Petroleum Economist encapsulated the hiring spree by quoting the head of US recruiting for one of the supermajors as saying, “Times are very good for us…and we are expanding– USD 60 [a barrel] oil will do a lot for your business. At the same time…a large number of employees are in their 50s and we need to increase our hiring across the board.” Academia listened to industry’s pleas for help, experiencing a meteoric rise in petroleum engineering enrollment not seen since the 1980s (Fig 1). Unfortunately, those students in the 1980s largely found themselves unemployed upon graduation as a result of cost-cutting measures following the oil price collapse of 1987, the result of which became the very same “lost generation” of talent that evidently now needs to be bridged by the big crew change. Fast-forward to today and, after some wild swings in commodity prices, to be sure, we nonetheless see oil once again hovering at around the same USD 60 mark which I fondly recall from the birth of my career. But a quick study of the headlines paints a starkly different picture this time around, as seemingly every company is either laying off people, freezing hiring, or doing both. An onslaught of such headlines has turned the mood in university campuses to an anxious and somber (if not pessimistic) one, which is completely opposite to the confident euphoria when I was there. I encourage you to read the TWAInterAct section, which features comments from SPE student chapter presidents on how the price drop is affecting students.

Domestic and International Student Matters: The College Experiences of Black Males Majoring in Engineering at an HBCU

IntroductionThe presence of international students in the United States adds complexity to the understanding of the intersection of race and achievement. Trends in international student enrollment suggest that the changing landscape of higher education cannot be fully conveyed without delving into the unique experiences of domestic and international undergraduates. According to the Institute of International Education (2001-2012), in the 2011/2012 academic year, a record number of international students (approximately 764,495) enrolled in U.S. institutions of higher education. This nearly 6% increase from the previous year, added over 22 billion dollars to the U.S. economy (HE, 2001-2012). Moreover, immigrants boast an enrollment rate higher than White and Americans (Bennett & Lutz, 2009). The number of college-aged immigrants is approximately 13%; however, they represent more than 25% of students enrolled at selective colleges and universities in the United States (Massey et al., 2007). Despite this indicator of achievement, research on achievement, particularly in engineering education is greatly devoid of international student perspectives. The purpose of this research is to discuss the college experiences of domestic (i.e., African American or U.S.-born) and international in engineering and the factors they believe help or hinder their persistence. For the purpose of this article, Black males refers to both domestic and international males, unless noted otherwise.Race and Achievement Issues in Engineering EducationDespite White House initiatives (e.g., STEM Master Teaching Corps; Larson, 2012, and Educate to Innovate; see www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/k-12/educate-innovate) incentivizing STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education and career participation, the field of engineering remains challenged in attracting and retaining domestic college students. While once steadily increasing, the percentage of domestic engineering bachelor's degree earners has leveled off at less than five percent (National Science Foundation; NSF, 2013). This represents the lowest percentage of engineering bachelor's degrees awarded to a particular racial group (Aud, Fox, & KewalRamani, 2010), which poses a major concern for the engineering field. Engineers are needed to apply scientific concepts to advance all forms of infrastructure from transportation systems and food production to surgical tools and aesthetic accessories. Therefore, the lack of domestic participation disservices a field that, within the United States, is already greatly devoid of diverse backgrounds and lacks the rich experience, vision, and direction that African Americans can offer. Another issue of concern is that while the engineering field has long been a male stronghold (Harper et al., 2004), this is not robustly the case for males. To reverse the downward trend of male enrollment and retention in engineering, it is important to consider the college experiences of male students who are successfully persisting in engineering. Furthermore, research investigating the unique experience of being a male in the traditionally male field of engineering has promise with informing efforts to recruit and retain a diverse engineering workforce. The importance of this research is highlighted by the relatively little research available that has explored the college experiences of students who are persisting in engineering (Moore, Madison-Colmore, & Smith, 2003).Historically colleges and universities (HBCUs) represent a unique educational context in which to investigate engineering education issues because they offer valuable information on students' experiences in higher education (Crisp, Nora, & Taggart, 2009; Nelson-Laird et al., 2007). HBCUs have been a traditional access point to higher education for students and continue to top the list of the highest awarders of engineering bachelor degrees to students (NSF, 2013). …

COMBINING VETERANS AND TEACHERS IN A UNIQUE SERVICE LEARNING EXPERIENCE

This paper describes the design-based service learning model utilized to provide an engaging STEM experience to local K-12 science and math teachers and U.S. military veterans returning from service and transitioning to secondary education. A critical factor that can contribute to increased student outcomes from a service-learning program is the level of preparation a teacher has as a mediator of knowledge and an active partner. Professional development activities directed towards in-service teachers could potentially alleviate this issue. Furthermore, such activities, when combined with well-developed inquiry-based learning pedagogy, could provide for increased engagement and understanding of STEM of students. Recent evidence shows that veterans may be more likely than the general population to be interested and well suited for a career in engineering. With more than two million veterans returning from service in the near future, the shortage in undergraduate engineering enrollment could be assuaged. The REVT format at Pitt has the potential to provide veterans with the support to experience STEM without the fear of failure, while allowing teachers to benefit from the field experience and leadership skills of veterans in the program. The juxtaposition of these two populations allows for co-mentoring opportunities, with each group benefiting from contrasting experiences.

Are Graduate Students Rational? Evidence from the Market for Biomedical Scientists

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget expansion from 1998 through 2003 increased demand for biomedical research, raising relative wages and total employment in the market for biomedical scientists. However, because research doctorates in biomedical sciences can often take six years or more to complete, the full labor supply response to such changes in market conditions is not immediate, but rather is observed over a period of several years. Economic rational expectations models assume that prospective students anticipate these future changes, and also that students take into account the opportunity costs of their pursuing graduate training. Prior empirical research on student enrollment and degree completions in science and engineering (S&E) fields indicates that “cobweb” expectations prevail: that is, at least in theory, prospective graduate students respond to contemporaneous changes in market wages and employment, but do not forecast further changes that will arise by the time they complete their degrees and enter the labor market. In this article, we analyze time-series data on wages and employment of biomedical scientists versus alternative careers, on completions of S&E bachelor's degrees and biomedical sciences PhDs, and on research expenditures funded both by NIH and by biopharmaceutical firms, to examine the responsiveness of the biomedical sciences labor supply to changes in market conditions. Consistent with previous studies, we find that enrollments and completions in biomedical sciences PhD programs are responsive to market conditions at the time of students' enrollment. More striking, however, is the close correspondence between graduate student enrollments and completions, and changes in availability of NIH-funded traineeships, fellowships, and research assistantships.