How Science Careers Are Made: Apartment Rentals & Transit Vouchers

This study began with a programmatic focus – researchers wanted to understand how to support young people in STEM career paths with a program designed to support interns at a science research organization. As data collection began, researchers realized that the study’s questions were generalizable and relevant to other researchers, educators, HR professionals, and university administrators. <br><br>The study began with the understanding that internships are a key part of young people’s transition from undergraduate education to graduate programs and the workforce. However, systems in both higher education and professional settings have been shown to marginalize and undermine the prospects of students whose identities lie outside of those of the dominant groups. This study’s purpose was to understand the experiences of minoritized young people in applying for and working in STEM internships – and how those experiences shaped their perspectives of career pathways in STEM fields. To shed light on this issue, researchers conducted 12 long-form group interviews with 45 participants, representing a wide variety of US higher education institutions and geographies. Results were wide-ranging and illuminated the types of barriers that young people encounter at every step of the process, as well as the types of support they have experienced or wished they could have. <br><br>The research team did an extensive analysis of one part of the dataset, focusing on the critical nature of logistics when it comes to making decisions about internships. Participants described logistics as the basic resources – housing, transportation, food, safety, and compensation – which often have little to do with the STEM content of the internship itself. For young people, the relative accessibility of each resource is interrelated and measured against the others. Together, the availability of resources determines both the positions students apply for and the offers they accept. These findings have implications for efforts to make STEM career paths accessible to young people from diverse backgrounds. <br><br>The full dataset also contains information on the reasons that young people pursue STEM study and careers, the types of internships and work experiences they have participated in, the relevance of different types of coursework for careers (as well as the gaps therein), and the emotional experience of finding, applying to, and engaging in internships. <br><br>The research team has prepared a manuscript about the results relating to logistics, which is currently in review, as of April 2025. <br><br>Provided in this data collection is the full codebook, the excerpts collected under the "logistics" code, and an example of the script used during data collection as well as an informed consent form for participants.