Disrupting the Pipeline: Critical Analyses of Student Pathways Through Postsecondary STEM Education

Heather Metcalf, Ph.D., Director of Research and Analysis for the Association of Women in Science, will give a WISE Research Roundtable talk, "Disrupting the Pipeline: Critical Analyses of Student Pathways Through Postsecondary STEM Education." 

Abstract: Critical mixed methods approaches allow us to reflect upon the ways in which we collect, measure, interpret, and analyze data, providing novel alternatives for quantitative analysis. For institutional researchers, whose work influences institutional policies, programs, and practices, the approach has the transformative ability to expose and create space for altering rather than reproducing problematic institutional stratifications and inequities. The usefulness of this approach is illustrated here using examples from a critical mixed methods study of student pathways through postsecondary STEM education.

About the speaker: Heather Metcalf, PhD, is Director of Research and Analysis for the Association for Women in Science (AWIS), where she directs, coordinates, and performs research and analyses related to women in all sectors of the STEM workforce. Dr. Metcalf previously completed a postdoctoral research associate position with the National Science Foundation ADVANCE Grant at the University of Arizona (UA), where her responsibilities focused on examining issues of faculty equity in STEM fields. She earned her doctorate from the Center for the Study of Higher Education at UA in May 2011. She also holds master’s degrees in Gender and Women’s Studies (UA) and Computer Science (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). Her research areas are science and technology policy studies, gender studies, and human-computer interaction. She has research, policy, and programmatic expertise in faculty and student development, recruitment and retention initiatives, STEM cultures, unconscious bias, STEM workforce and education, and diversity and equity issues.