ASSIGNMENT

Assignment

Assignment

May and Chubin (2003) pointed to seven key factors that contribute to the success and consequent retention of minority students pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees in STEM: pre-college preparation, recruitment programs, admissions policies, financial assistance, academic intervention programs, and graduate school preparation and admission. Arguably, these factors, while important in STEM specifically, may be deemed crucial elements for minority students in general, regardless of academic major. In fact, the literature on minority student retention as a whole has promoted each of these factors in some form or another (e.g., Fenske, Porter, & DuBrock, 2000; Rivera-Mosquera et al., 2005; Swail, Redd, & Perna, 2003). It is important to note, however, that retention concerns have not had a blanket effect across all STEM fields and ethnic groups. For example, fields like biology and chemistry have achieved and in some cases, exceeded relative gender equality in degrees conferred. In 2006, women received 59.7 percent of the bachelor's degrees awarded in biological and agricultural sciences, and 42 percent of those awarded in physical science fields such as chemistry and physics. However, women received only 19.5 percent of bachelor's degrees awarded in engineering (National Science Foundation, 2008).

To do this, a brief overview of recent work on college student retention is given, with special attention given to the applicability of that literature to women and minorities in STEM. Then, students' attitudes towards their STEM programs, their self-efficacy beliefs in their ability to complete their graduate or undergraduate program, and the relationship between their selfefficacy and motivation to do so are discussed. This discussion is followed by policy implications and concludes with directions for further research.

Drawing from the work of Van Gennep's (1960) idea of three stages that exist in the rites of passage, Vincent Tinto (1988) proposed three parallel stages of student departure from college: separation, transition, and incorporation. The overarching idea behind Tinto's application of VanGennep's stages to retention at the college level was that retention was most likely to occur when students were able to transition successfully from their past associations (e.g., family home, high school, and neighborhood family networks) to full integration into a new social role or situation (college). Tinto (1975) acknowledged that the task of fully separating from past associations would be harder for students with a home environment significantly different from the college atmosphere, yet insisted that such separation was necessary for full integration into the campus climate, and consequently, for students' retention in that climate. In 1993, Tinto argued that it might not only be impossible to expect full separation from the students' home lives, but that retaining such home ties may actually aid, rather than hinder, integration and consequent retention at the college level, especially for minority students entering a predominantly White college atmosphere.

Rodgers and Summers (2008) proposed the inclusion of several psychological constructs in any discussion of minority college student retention. Among them, the authors addressed the role of self-efficacy and motivation in the retention process. Both will be discussed in the following ...