Q&A
Discussion on tracking higher education enrollment and career placement in STEM fields
1:37:59
ยท
132 sec
Council Member Rivera inquires about how the program tracks higher education enrollment or career placement in STEM fields. Erin Prada from WCS responds, explaining their alumni tracking process and the importance of hands-on STEM experiences.
- Different institutions track progress in various ways, including longitudinal studies
- Data shows that real-world STEM experiences contribute to degree completion
- There's a need for additional support to scale and unify alumni tracking across organizations
Carlina Rivera
1:37:59
How do you track how does the program track higher education enrollment or career placement in STEM fields?
1:38:12
If if you do.
Erin Prada
1:38:13
Yeah.
1:38:14
Sorry.
1:38:14
Yes.
1:38:17
We would track that through our alumni prog, alumni tracking progress.
1:38:23
And among our institutions, we're all at at different, spaces with that.
1:38:28
Some of us are tracking, progress within our institutions.
1:38:33
Lot we're some of us are doing longitudinal studies of specific internship programs, which then would include after those internship programs, where are the our young people going, what colleges and universities are they going into, what degree programs are they entering into, and, are they finishing those degree programs.
1:38:52
So just to give you an example of the the Shrimp Network, and we have, Project True.
1:38:57
Yandell, spoke about his experience in Project True.
1:39:03
We have studies that show that an experience, real world, hands on experience in a STEM career is going to sustain a young person's ability to actually complete a STEM degree program.
1:39:16
And that without those experiences, there is data to support that young people do not complete their STEM degree programs.
1:39:25
So getting back to your original question about are we tracking, we are, but we're all tracking in different ways.
1:39:31
And that's actually one of the things that we really need additional support on scaling is that, to really be able to have transitions of our interns from our organizations into the cultural sector or into the New York City STEM sector, we really need to have a unified understanding of our alumni so that our alumni are not just moving internally within our organizations, but that we're have the ability to move them across our organizations.
1:40:00
And and, collectively, that's where our impact is for a young person.
1:40:04
Collectively, the amount of opportunities we have is just at a a whole other scale when you start to do that.