2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) project aims to enhance professional identity, foster a sense of belonging, and reduce impostorism among STEM graduate students. Recognizing the prevailing focus on content expertise in STEM fields, this project introduces a cohort-based program centered on storytelling. Students learn and apply storytelling techniques through personal narratives, which are grounded in narrative identity, reflection, and cognitive consistency theories. This initiative builds on previous pilot work and is framed by Self-Determination Theory, targeting the basic human needs of autonomy (identity), relatedness (belongingness), and competence (imposter feelings). The project's collaboration with The Story Collider, a national nonprofit, further aligns with the IGE mission to transform STEM graduate education. By performing stories of discovery, fitting in, and overcoming doubt, students explore themes relevant to their STEM experiences. The project's goal is to develop, implement, and assess a storytelling curriculum that contributes to broader dissemination and fosters positive change in STEM graduate education.

The project operates on three primary hypotheses: (1) storytelling pedagogy will improve STEM graduate students' professional identity and sense of belonging while reducing impostorism; (2) storytelling will decrease the stereotyping of STEM professionals; and (3) personal storytelling performances will enhance retention in graduate programs and support transition into STEM careers. Four key objectives guide the research: (1) develop a storytelling curriculum in collaboration with The Story Collider; (2) implement the curriculum with graduate students; (3) evaluate the impact of these performances on multiple stakeholders; and (4) disseminate the storytelling curriculum and student stories via open-source platforms like workshops and webinars.

The research will address three main questions using a mixed-methods approach: (1) What are the thematic and structural characteristics of personal narratives that students create about their STEM experiences? (2) How does storytelling relate to professional identity, sense of belonging, and impostor feelings among STEM graduate students? (3) How do the narrative characteristics of these stories influence identity, belonging, and impostor syndrome?

Preliminary quantitative data, drawn from 38 participants, suggests improvements in both STEM and researcher identities (as hypothesized), with slight declines in social fit (inconsistent with hypotheses) and marginal decreases in impostorism (as hypothesized). Audience responses to Fall 2024 performances, measured using the Warmth and Competence Scale and the Nerd-Genius Stereotype Scale, showed no change in perceived competence but noted significant improvements in perceived warmth. Although not formally hypothesized, this finding offers a promising direction for future research. Post-workshop interviews with graduate student participants further suggest that participants found the workshops beneficial and expressed interest in expanding the program to faculty and undergraduate students, as well as non-STEM fields.

This project is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).