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Broadening Participation in STEM and Sociology in Practice
Sat, August 10, 4:30 to 6:10pm, New York Hilton, Floor: Second Floor, RegentAbstract
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has placed increasing importance on the broader impacts of scientific research on society. Many faculty outside the social sciences face barriers to effectively including broader impacts activities and goals to their science research. Sociologists are uniquely situated to collaborate with these faculty because they have experience thinking broadly about how research in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields might broadly impact social policy and social inequality. Of the five key areas NSF has identified as necessary in scientific research, four have an element where social science research and applied sociology/evaluation can help to measure or assess the impacts of their science. One of those areas where science can have a broader impact on society is through increasing access and to broaden participation in science for individuals who belong to groups historically underrepresented in STEM. Indeed, Broadening Participation in STEM is one of the 10 Big Ideas crucial to the future of science where clear investments have been made through NSF-wide directorates like ADVANCE and INCLUDES (Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science). As evaluators or researchers, sociologists are particularly well placed to collaborate broadly and to put sociology into practice to research the root causes of social inequality STEM fields. In this presentation, I will provide an example of an interdisciplinary collaboration between social scientists and stakeholders in the mathematical sciences funded through the NSF INCLUDES grant. I will share insights from the mixed methods social science research conducted as part of this project and will discuss the results of a survey national mathematics stakeholders and their perceptions of the importance of partnering with social scientists to their broadening participation goals. Opportunities for future collaborations in broadening participation research will also be discussed.