Talking about Leaving Revisited: Why we are still Talking about Leaving

Join us for the first of five discussions in the SEA Change Institute Series: Talking about Leaving Revisited with Anne-Barrie Hunter, Elaine Seymour, and Timothy Weston

Talking about Leaving Revisited discusses findings from a five-year study that explores the extent, nature, and contributory causes of field-switching both from and among STEM majors, and what enables persistence to graduation. The book reflects on what has and has not changed in the past three decades, since publication of Talking about Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences. The authors of each chapter collaborate to address key questions, drawing on findings from each related study source: national and institutional data, interviews with faculty and students, structured observations and student assessments of teaching methods in STEM gateway courses. Pitched to a wide audience, engaging in style, and richly illustrated in the interviewees' own words, this book affords the most comprehensive explanatory account to date of persistence, relocation and loss in undergraduate sciences.

Talking about Leaving Revisited (TALR) team members describe the rationale, scope and design of their sequel to the 1997 Talking about Leaving (TAL) study. They offer; disaggregated estimates for national STEM switching, persistence and college drop-out rates, changes in these patterns since the original study, and describe which student groups are now at greatest risk of loss from STEM majors. From TALR student interview study findings, they present the hierarchy of factors contributing both to switching decisions and the survival struggles of students who persist, and comment on how these differ from the TAL findings.  

Register here.

Note: this online event is sponsored and offered by AAAS and Sea Change; CTLO invites Caltech colleagues to participate, but is not responsible for registration or event details. The full series of events can be found here