Purpose
It is critically important that the United States create and maintain a thriving scientific workforce that propels future discoveries and innovations. The academic research laboratory is an essential micro-culture where students learn what science is, what is expected of a scientist, and decide whether they will pursue or persist within the scientific community. This project investigates the culture of science and aims to understand the transmission of norms, expectations, and values between and among scientists, their students, and their research personnel. We seek to learn how people within the labs, including faculty and labmates, communicate that culture of science in ways that do – or do not – support student motivation and experiences, especially those students who are from historically underrepresented and/or racially marginalized backgrounds.
The first stage of this work, Project CURE 1.0, was funded by the National Institutes of Health (PIs Jessi Smith & Dustin Thoman). We recruited more than 40 biomedical faculty who led research labs at 18 departments across 9 institutions across Montana and California (three four-year public institutions and six tribal colleges). These faculty mentors provided us with a list of their research assistants every term. We collected longitudinal data from 11 cohorts of RAs, following more than 500 students for two academic years, up to seven time points of data. We also tested a Research lab Communal Values intervention activity using a randomized controlled trial design.
The second stage of this work, Project CURE 2.0, is currently funded by the National Science Foundation and is ongoing. The goal of this project is to follow several hundred students working within faculty research labs at three universities with the goal to answer four research questions:
- How do the messages that faculty directly and indirectly convey to their research labs shape students’ perceptions about the norms and values of science?
- To what extent do faculty’s beliefs about the norms and values of science predict experiences of microaffirmations in the lab among historically underrepresented students?
- To what extent do faculty beliefs about the norms and values of science predict undergraduate student research interest and persistence, and are these effects stronger for historically underrepresented students?
- To what degree do we observe discrepancies between faculty beliefs about the norms and values of science, and what students think their faculty believe? Do these discrepancies predict student experiences and outcomes?
To answer these questions, the project will draw on longitudinal social psychological methods and build on social capital theory. This project will employ behavioral measures related to student persistence, productivity, and career choices measured at the end of two years in addition to subjective measures of research interest collected over one year. The goal is to produce transformative knowledge on scientific communication processes that shape students’ research experiences and interests, with the goal of retaining a diverse and robust future scientific workforce.
To learn even more about Project CURE, visit the project website
Funding
Broadening participation and the culture of undergraduate research experiences. National Science Foundation HRD 2100129, 2021-2024
PIs: Dustin Thoman, Christal Sohl & Miguel Villodas, SDSU & Jessi Smith, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
Key personnel: Ivan Hernandez, Oliva Mota Segura, Rosalva Romero-Gonzalez, Lilibeth Watson
Culturally connected communal goals: Latino and Native Americans in biomedicine. National Institute of Health R01GM098462, 2011 – 2017.
PIs: Jessi Smith, Montana State University, Dustin Thoman, California State University Long Beach
Key Personnel: Elizabeth Brown, Jill Allen, Gregg Muragishi, Katherine Lee
Representative Publications
Hernandez, I. A., Smith, J. L., Villodas, M. T., & Thoman, D.B. (2023). Creating an inclusive research lab with student onboarding materials. Nature Reviews Psychology. doi: 10.1038/s44159-023-00163-2
Allen, J., Smith, J.L., Thoman, D.B., & Walters, R. (2018). Fluctuating team science: Perceiving science as collaborative improves science student motivation. Motivation Science, 4, 347-361.doi: 10.1037/mot0000099
Thoman, D.B., Muragishi, G.A., & Smith, J.L. (2017) Research microcultures as socialization contexts for underrepresented science students. Psychological Science, 28, 760-773. doi: 10.1177/0956797617694865
Thoman, D.B., +Brown, E.R., Mason, A.Z., Harmsen, A.G., & Smith, J.L. (2015). The role of altruistic values in motivating underrepresented minority students for biomedicine. BioScience, 65, 183-188. doi: 10.1093/biosci/biu199
Allen, J., Muragishi, G.A., Smith, J.L., Thoman, D.B., & Brown, E.R. (2015). To grab and to hold: Cultivating communal goals to overcome cultural and structural barriers in first generation college students’ science interest. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 1, 331-341. doi: 10.1037/tps0000046
Brown, E.R., Smith, J.L., Thoman, D.B., Allen, J., & Muragishi, G. (2015). From bench to bedside: A communal utility value intervention to enhance students’ science motivation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107, 1116-1135. doi: 10.1037/edu00000033
Brown, E.R., Thoman, D.B., Smith, J.L., & Diekman, A.B. (2015). Closing the communal goal gap: The importance of communal affordances in science career motivation. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 45, 662-673. doi: 10.1111/jasp.12327