“Uncover[ing] the precious potential in every child”: The effects of a STEM pre-college program on former participants’ academic and career trajectories

Little is known about how former participants of STEM pre-college programs make sense of their program experiences. These pre-collegiate experiences influence former participants’ academic, career, and life trajectories even if participants did not continue on STEM-related studies or careers. We investigated the experiences of former participants of STEM pre-college programs to understand the long-term effects of these programs using a qualitative research design, interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), and phenomenological variant of ecological systems theoretical approach (PVEST). Single-person, semi-structured interviews with former participants of STEM pre-college programs provided insight and perspectives about their experiences. Former participants expressed that their STEM pre-college program provided them the space to overcome self-limitations, be seen, value community, and exposure to STEM resources as foundational to their STEM academic and life outcomes. When designing and implementing STEM pre-college programs tailored to engaging racially underrepresented K-12 students, these findings provide STEM PCP stakeholders a novel approach to uncover information on programming effects long-term.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Educ Policy, Orgzn & Leadrshp

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Simpson, Amari Tevell

Contributors dc:contributor

• Baber, Lorenzo
• Trent, William T
• Hood, Denice
• Zamani-Gallaher, Eboni

• STEM
• STEM pre-college program
• IPA
• PVEST
• qualitative research

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Amari Tevell Simpson

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/116018

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F116018