Academic institutions and national organizations have integrated professional development (PD) activities to their offerings, with the overarching goal of STEM students in higher education acquiring non-technical skills and knowledge. However, when it comes to PD activities serving specifically<b> </b>STEM students from underrepresented populations, there are additional goals to PD activities (for example, fostering a sense of community and belongingness). Here, we aim to apply a model informed by implementation science frameworks to evaluate PD programs in STEM higher education. Specifically, we evaluate PD programs designed, developed and implemented by the American Chemical Society for students in chemistry who identify as part of an underrepresented populations. Using an evidence-driven approach, we collected multiple sources of data including: outcomes surveys, questionnaires, observations, semi-structured interviews, and artifacts used in the program implementation. Preliminary evaluation results suggest a partial misalignment between expected and verified program outcomes for the target population; and reveal key aspects of the organization that are playing a role in achieving an alignment between expected and verified outcomes. As a long-term outcome for this project, entities concerned with the professional development of students in STEM can adopt the evaluation model to make informed decisions about future implementations of their programs.

Using an evidence-driven model to evaluate American Chemical Society higher education professional development programs

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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