Our research team has finished our fourth phase of data collection among former Wisconsin student veterans and service members.
For this phase, we administered surveys and interviews to more than 200 student service members and veterans who took part in the study starting in the spring of 2020. These participants attended the Universities of Wisconsin at Green Bay, Madison, Milwaukee, Oshkosh, and Stout. Since 2020 we have also begun collecting data from student vets and service members, and civilian students, across universities nationally.
Our central goal is to better understand the STEM trajectories these students have been on since 2020–chiefly whether they’re still in college, have graduated and gone on to further schooling or careers, or have taken other paths. We are most interested in how their social support networks have influenced their STEM journeys.
We are now analyzing these data to create reports, scholarly papers, and presentations that we hope can inform STEM educators, student affairs practitioners, higher education leaders, scholars, and other interested stakeholders. We thank these participants for their time and thoughtfulness and continue to learn a great deal from their experiences.
Look out for findings from this round of data collection in future posts.