To persist in STEM, students not only need academic and financial support, they also need social, personal, and community support. A comprehensive network of support not only provides access to science degrees and careers, but also promotes self-efficacy, science identity, and a sense of belonging—traits that are essential for persistence. SEEDS - Strategies for Ecology Education, Diversity and Sustainability - the flagship education program of the Ecological Society of America, provides that rare comprehensive support to underrepresented minority (URM) undergraduate students in ecology through mentoring, field trips, leadership development, and research fellowships.
Here, we presents evidence of SEEDS’s success based on two studies. The first was a quantitative analysis, measuring participants’ persistence in ecology-related undergraduate majors, graduate programs, careers, and leadership positions; their education and career plans, as well as their interest in and level of engagement with the field of ecology.
The second study was a qualitative analysis that allowed us to look beyond the numbers to gain a deeper understanding of how SEEDS achieves its success. We analyzed open-ended survey questions against a social influence theoretical framework that proposes three dominant processes that predict students’ integration into a scientific community: scientific self‐efficacy, scientific identity, and shared values with the scientific community.
Results/Conclusions
Our quantitative study found that:
- 80% of SEEDS alumni in our study had completed at least one degree in an ecology-related field;
- 71% of working SEEDS alumni respondents have careers in ecology;
- 81% of SEEDS alumni respondents have been engaged in the field of ecology in a variety of ways;
- 63% reported that they had received a fellowship, scholarship, award, or some other recognition,
- 82% of active undergraduate students reported that SEEDS played a “very important” or “quite important” role in shaping their decision to pursue ecology or a related field;
- A secondary goal was to increase diversity within the professional society itself, and about one-third of the SEEDS alumni respondents are ESA members; of those, 81% are URMs.
Our qualitative study gave us a deeper understanding of how SEEDS achieves these successes. Specifically, SEEDS successfully welcomes students into a science community by (1) providing both breadth and depth of programming that offers flexible, multilayered approaches to developing self‐efficacy to fit the needs of diverse students, (2) enabling participants to integrate a science identity into other preexisting identities, and (3) implementing programming that intentionally helps participants to consciously connect their values with those of their communities.