Hello and welcome. My name is Cindy and I'm a researcher and project manager at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry. You're listening to an episode of our series, Transition Points: Snapshots of a STEM Journey. Transition Points is a series of podcasts, briefs, and blog posts that we've created in order to share some of the insights from our longitudinal study, The Developing YOUth! Project.

This project follows alumni from our legacy teen program here at the Museum. That teen program was called, the Science Minors and Achievers. The project is mixed methods and has a quantitative component which includes our annual surveys. As well as a qualitative component. The qualitative methods we used include participant observations from when the teens were still in the program as well as in-depth interviews we've conducted with some participants over the years.

We last interviewed our participants during the summer of 2021. Some of them were finishing up college, some were starting their careers, and some were pursuing graduate school. For a few more details about the project and series overall, take a listen to our introductory episode.

Our participants felt strongly that the community at the Museum was very supportive. In one of our other episodes, we talked about how a positive peer culture contributed to that supportive community at the Museum. In this episode, we'll take a closer look at what participants felt made staff in the Science Minors and Achievers program crucial to the supportive environment at Museum. We'll also talk a little bit about how staff and faculty in college, affected their experiences and feelings of support.

At Griffin MSI

The Science Minors and Achievers program has two, kind of 3 parts to it. We talked about this a bit in or episode on building up skills for success. The first part Science Minors was a little more structured. The kind of second part, the youth in the program called this part the "in-betweeners" involved training and time with more experienced youth on the Museum floor. And the last part, the Science Achievers, gave youths more freedom and responsibility facilitating experiments and activities with Museum guests.

Some of our participants talked about how their parents had been the ones to sign them up for the Science Minors program. I asked them... "So you're a teenager in high school, your parent or parents kinda made you be in the Science minors, but then you voluntarily chose to be an Achiever... like you yourself chose to wake up early every Saturday morning for weeks and go to the Museum and learn things. On a Saturday... and you did this for years. Why?"

And their answers were always in the same vein-it was the people, they'd say. It was the Museum guests, their fellow Achievers, the volunteers and staff at the Museum, AND, it was the staff facilitators of the Science Minors and Achievers program itself.

Side note: In another episode we'll focus on how their peers played a large part in why they chose to come to the Museum every Saturday.

So many of the participants I talked to raved about the program staff and how they felt so seen and so supported by them. They could tell the staff genuinely cared about them and their well-being. They talked to teens as individuals and treated them with respect. Ana was particularly shy before starting the program. She credited the outspoken, positive, and bubbly personality of one of her program staff for showing her ways to break out of her shell.

ANA: Yeah, I didn't realize that I wasn't this kind of more quirky, bubbly kind of person because I was just always so kind of shy and reserved as a kid. Um, but I think also think one of the people that brought that out, I think was [redacted] because she was just like, wild and crazy and I think she kind of caught on to me a little bit and I realized that, okay, I can kind of like totally express myself because this woman's being so expressive, and, you know, I didn't have to like kind of, like fit a mold of being like, you know, a quiet scientist just focus on her work, I could have a personality too and be successful. And so like I said, she taught me and so like, and I feel like, you know, she really took so much interest in getting to know me, and like, all the other, like, members are high up, like I should call him to run the program, I think, like, really have an interest in knowing me as a person, and not just what I can do. One more time, no core scientific standpoint. And so I kind of realized that, like, I can have personality, as well, and be able to kind of get across my, you know, points in messages. And I think that makes people more engaged in what you have to say, as well. So yeah, that's what I took away from it."

At the Museum they received individualized attention and support. They felt respected and encouraged at the same time. What made this even more unique was that some of them felt they were not able to find this type of support in other institutional spaces, like their own high schools.

In College

When Achievers graduated from high school, they also graduated from the program. All of the Achievers I spoke to enrolled in a post-secondary institution, whether it was a community college, a private college, or a state university. When they got there, they no longer had weekly check-ins with Griffin MSI staff on Saturday mornings and no one asking them about what their "good news" for the week was.

When we talked to our participants last, it had been 4 to 5 years after they'd graduated, so many of them had already completed most of their degree requirements and were thinking seriously or starting to establish themselves on a career path. Achievers were in a position then to reflect on what it was like to transition from familiar spaces like home, high school, and the Museum to new and different spaces such as their colleges or universities.

Additionally, those who were now working could reflect on that additional transition into their professional careers. And of course, we knew some of those experiences would differ, solely because of the fact that our Achievers were spread out across all different kinds of institutions now. But we also found that their experiences differed based on who they were within each of those institutions (and of course, how those institutions received them).

In terms of finding support in staff or in a university setting, faculty, our Achievers had a variety of experiences. Most participants turned to older students in their major, graduate students, and professors to find mentors to support their development. However, the ease of access to these networks seemed to vary for our participants. In particular, several of our white and/or men participants described finding and accessing a mentor or supportive network with ease. Cam found support from a professor and graduate students through something as simple as an email. When asked about how he secured a position on a research team while he was an undergraduate student, Cam said:

CAM: I just emailed him. And then we had some interviews. And then he accepted me. And I talked to a bunch of different graduate students before I joined the team to find out which one I would like to join. And then I decided on this one, so I joined this one. And then yeah, then it got ramped up last year.

The participants who talked about contacting professors and graduate students with ease were more often those whose identities appeared to align with those in the majority in STEM spaces, i.e., white and/or men. On the other hand, many of our women of color, and especially our Black Women participants, had a much more difficult, if not impossible, time accessing mentors and networks that were supportive of their developmental needs. In some cases, these participants even reported facing people in mentoring positions who were very much unsupportive.

EMMA: Actually, some people have told me that they believe that I'm in the position that I'm in or I'm at the companies that I'm at, because of the fact that they're trying to, like meet a quota. And I think that knowing that there's some people in my environment, or I've even had mentors tell me, 'oh, you only got that, because you're a Black woman,' and, 'you know, they're trying to increase diversity measures.' And I think that, other people having that perspective, I think that that bothers me more. ... Well, I won't say more, but that bothers me, because it's like, you know, it's not like we're--Black Women are taking over tech companies [...] Black people in general make up less than probably 3% of most big tech companies. And then, you know, they could have chosen any Black guy [...]. I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one [...] that they had as an option, so...

In a unique situation, one participant's university did provide an immediate and supportive network for students of color in STEM. Before even starting a STEM program at her university, Brandy was contacted by the university's office specializing in support for students of color in STEM majors. This office organized a specialized orientation where Brandy and other students of color could meet each other and situate themselves on campus before the start of the term.

Emma, who majored in Computer Science, DID talk about joining formal student organizations geared towards Black students in STEM majors. She also talked about reaching visiting professors and TA's during office hours. It sounded like she had access to faculty but overall, but like several of our other women of color students, she did not express the same sort of ease of access or support that some of our white and men students clearly felt.

Implications

Staff at the Museum were responsible for facilitating a supportive space for participants in the program. Many of our Achievers felt staff were a central part of their experience in the program. Andy told us that he felt his relationship with program staff may have changed the course of his life:

ANDY: Like that's like such an indirect thing from like, a little moment three and a half years ago, when I was like, hey, are four and a half years ago I'm thinking it's 20 20% four and a half years ago when I was like, Hey, you know, I miss, you know, using stem to have a positive social impact. Why don't I you know, like what was instilled to me by, by [redacted], [redacted], and [redacted] why don't I go, you know, do something with my career. And that was it. And it started like a little chain reaction and you know, my life significantly changed. Yeah, I kind of wonder like, what I have not what I haven't done that if it wasn't at the museum, and I don't know, through this, I don't know. I would maybe still up Be in California working nine to seven and at a job I didn't like because I thought it was the best thing for me. And I thought there weren't any other options.

However, once Achievers graduated from high school and out of the program, most left home for college-many entering into large predominantly white institutions, some of which were schools of engineering. Outside of the Museum, our participants encountered variations in the support they felt by those receiving institutions.

Their varied experiences suggests that access to a supportive network fostered by staff, that is faculty and other academic leadership, is not necessarily a guarantee for all of our participants once they leave our program and start college.

Conclusion

In this episode, we touched on how staff in the SMA program helped to provide a supportive space for Achievers. We contrasted this with ways this support may have been missing once our participants got to college. In our episode on the positive peer culture at the Museum, we'll talk about how Achievers felt about each other. To illuminate another contrast between spaces like Griffin MSI with the spaces they transitioned into at their universities, we hear from participants about their experiences with peers in their college courses.

Our episode on skill building for success, focuses more on how other features of the program helped participants to build skills that set them apart from their peers in college or in their careers. In our episode on Meaningful Opportunities, we'll talk a little bit more about how our participants felt they were able to use science education to impact their communities.

In our episode on belonging, we discuss more broadly, a sense of belonging to communities inside and outside of the Museum. In that episode we dig deeper into how feeling a sense of belonging to communities, or rather, feeling the absence of this, affected some of our Black Women-identifying participants in particular. We focused on these participants because of the stark contrast between their experiences in college, and the experiences our participants described while in the Science Minors and Achievers program.

Research Brief #3 (PDF)