TPC Journal V8, Issue 3- FULL ISSUE

262 Christopher T. Belser, M. Ann Shillingford, Andrew P. Daire, Diandra J. Prescod, Melissa A. Dagley Factors Influencing Undergraduate Student Retention in STEM Majors: Career Development, Math Ability, and Demographics The United States is facing a crisis with respect to filling job vacancies within science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) industries and with students completing STEM undergraduate degrees. In addition, disparities exist for females and ethnic minorities within STEM fields. Whereas prior research has centered on disparities in STEM fields, retention rates, and some intervention programs, researchers have not given much attention to the role of career development initiatives within STEM recruitment and retention programming. The purpose of the present study was to incorporate demographic variables, math performance, and career development–related factors into predictive models of STEM retention with a sample of undergraduate students within a STEM recruitment and retention program. The resulting two models accurately predicted first-year to second-year retention with 73.4% of the cases and accurately predicted first-year to third-year retention with 70.0% of the cases. Based on the results, the researchers provide a rationale for STEM career programming in K–12 and higher education settings and for the inclusion of career development and career counseling in STEM education programming. Keywords : STEM, retention, career development, career counseling, undergraduate student The United States lacks an adequate number of workers to keep up with the demand for trained workers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields (National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics [NCSES], 2017; National Science Board, 2018; Sithole et al., 2017). Researchers have pointed to the overall stagnancy of undergraduate students declaring and completing STEM degrees (Carnevale, Smith, & Melton, 2011; Doerschuk et al., 2016; Sithole et al., 2017). Additionally, underrepresentation is a problem for racial and ethnic minorities and females in STEM fields (NCSES, 2017). Because of these disparities, universities have developed programs centered on recruitment and retention of STEM undergraduates (Bouwma-Gearhart, Perry, & Presley, 2014; Dagley et al., 2016; Schneider, Bickel, & Morrison-Shetlar, 2015) and both government and private entities invest billions of dollars annually toward STEM initiatives at the K–12 and higher education levels (Carnevale et al., 2011). However, many of these endeavors have failed to incorporate components centered on career development or career planning. The National Career Development Association (2015) defined career development as “the sequence of career-related choices and transitions made over the life span” (p. 4) and career planning as a structured process through which a person makes decisions and plans for a future career. Career development activities, such as structured career planning courses, have shown efficacy with general undergraduate populations (Osborn, Howard, & Leierer, 2007; Reardon, Melvin, McClain, Peterson, & Bowman, 2015) but have been studied less commonly with STEM-specific undergraduate populations (Belser, Prescod, The Professional Counselor Volume 8, Issue 3, Pages 262-276 http://tpcjournal.nbcc.org © 2018 NBCC, Inc. and Affiliates doi:10.15241/ctb.8.3.262 Christopher T. Belser, NCC, is an assistant professor at the University of New Orleans. M. Ann Shillingford is an associate professor at the University of Central Florida. Andrew P. Daire is a dean at Virginia Commonwealth University. Diandra J. Prescod is an assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University. Melissa A. Dagley is an executive director at the University of Central Florida. Correspondence can be addressed to Christopher Belser, 2000 Lakeshore Drive, Bicentennial Education Center Room 174, New Orleans, LA 70148, ctbelser@uno.edu.