The purpose of this project was to evaluate retrospectively the impact of the 1990s era Young Scholars Project that NSF administered in an effort to build the nation’s STEM workforce. We thus sought to collect self-reported data from YSP alums we could reach and then analyze the main factors affecting their decisions to opt into (or opt out of) STEM-related fields.

The intention was to contribute valuable insight into the design of future STEM education programs  envisioned to affect workforce participation. The challenge involves a program that concluded more than 25 years ago. The opportunity involved working with middle-aged professionals who have retrospective wisdom and insight into whether or how NSF’s intervention(s) affected them. The project’s data analysis involved the ascendant methodology of quantitative ethnography and software tools associated with QE, in order to build statistically validated ethnographies of the YSP alum community and the projects in which they participated.

An initial outcome was a system to find and contact as many 1989-1998 YSP participants and PI alumni as possible. This process followed steps appearing in the original EAGER proposal, of using records from former PIs, social media, NSF records, LinkedIn, and other people-finder services. Records from former PIs, where possible, proved especially valuable.

While NSF had PI contact information (updated where possible), there was never a retained list of student names.  Approximately 26 individuals who served as principal investigators between 1988 and 1996 were found, along with an additional 20 participants. They were each video interviewed. Reaching out to former participants resulted in completion of 63 surveys.

The team transcribed, coded, and analyzed the transcripts, with two papers in peer-reviewed conference papers, and one as a best-paper nomination.  Using social-cognitive career theory and epistemic network analysis to assist in building a YSP ethnography relevant to the YSP goals appearing above and to providing productive information and guidance to NSF and other agencies for programming oriented around future workforce development.

One of the most compelling and recurrent findings of the project's data collection involved reflections by both now (mostly) retired principal investigators and  middle-aged professionals who participated as precollege students about the role of self-identity and how identity was influenced by NSF's investment in them through the YSP project.

This recurrent finding, along with various dimensions surrounding questions of identity, proved formative in developing a subsequent major project supported by NSF’s Advancing Informal Science Learning (AISL) program. The AISL proposal (221563) was successful; it fully focused on adolescent identity formation in STEM projects in its research questions.  The data collection and the formative role this grant played in a subsequent AISL project were practical initial outcomes of the grant.

We  also sought to build theoretical outcomes. Our aim in theory development was to unify the underlying principles of self-determination theory (SDT) and social cognitive career theory (SCCT) into a straightforward consideration in design of both informal and formal STEM learning experiences, doing so in a way that faithfully represents the interview and survey data from this EAGER. Additionally, our aim was to articulate our findings in a way that extend beyond the commonsense notion that enrichment programs nourish self-identity. They certainly do, but it does not require am NSF grant to demonstrate that. The integration of the unified SDT-SCCT framework with semiotic theory, incorporated into a complex adaptive systems interpretation, has been expressed in conference presentations but remains in development. This integration, still in progress, is non-trivial, gives materially important suggestions about malleable aspects of project design, and accurately reflects data collected in the grant.

Last Modified: 04/29/2025
Modified by: Eric Hamilton