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Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
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4

Pathways into Space Sciences

At any given time, the pool of potential National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) mission leaders represents the culmination of a long series of educational and research training experiences through which they acquired the knowledge and skills appropriate to the rigor and challenge of mission leadership. This set of knowledge and skills ranges from deep (usually PhD-level) scientific expertise in a relevant subject area, to hands-on (oftentimes engineering-related) experience with instruments and/or data, to proposal development experience (ideally directly), to management experience at one or more leadership levels within the typical hierarchy of NASA space missions.

Acquiring such knowledge and experiences takes time and begins with entry into higher education, where most scientists and engineers first begin to acquire foundational knowledge as well as exposure and involvement in authentic research. The committee defines and discusses what constitutes authentic research experiences below, but to put it simply, it means “real” research or experiences that involve direct engagement with the actual work of missions or that provides training that is directly relevant to real mission work.

If a scientist or engineer first becomes eligible to help lead a NASA space mission when they secure professional employment in the field, then this pathway spans at least 20 years and transitions across multiple key junctures. This generally includes starting college to graduation (~4 years), starting graduate school to doctoral degree (~6 years), postdoctoral research training to professional position (3-5 years), and becoming an established professional (~7 years). Today’s emerging leaders who may just now be proposing a first NASA mission were beginning their journey as college freshmen around the start of the millennium.

DEMOGRAPHICS ALONG THE PATHWAY: ATTRITION OF TALENT AT THE SOURCE

Reasonably good statistics are available from comprehensive national databases for the first half of this journey, from first-year undergraduate to PhD. For example, Table 4.1 depicts a synthetic cohort analysis of this pathway for U.S. citizens and permanent residents in physics and astronomy, as entering first-year students in 2007 to PhD in 2018. Physics and astronomy are linked by the fact that students who eventually earn PhDs in astronomy and astrophysics often begin as physics majors. This is a “synthetic cohort” in the sense that it does not represent a literal longitudinal tracking of the same individuals over time; rather, the experience of the cohort is inferred by comparing national demographics data at time points separated by the typical duration of various academic stages. There are also limitations to a simple, linear “pipeline” progression model; however, it does provide a convenient

Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
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basis for useful comparisons. The data are meant to be illustrative of major representative areas relevant to NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) space missions, and reveal important patterns of major missed opportunities and ongoing disparities into the ranks of potential future NASA mission leaders. First, only about 2% of all first-year college students in the United States express an interest in a physical sciences major. Encouragingly, this (relatively small) cohort of incoming, interested students does not exhibit large disparities by race/ethnicity (on the other hand, women in the aggregate do experience disproportionate attrition in physics during the transition from high school to college; see Figure 4.3 below). However, of these initially interested students, only about 11% of White students complete a physics or astronomy bachelor’s degree (consistent with an analysis from University of California, Davis (see Figure 4.1); and only 4% of underrepresented minority (URM) students1 with similar interests do so, a disparity of about a factor of 3. While the largest attrition appears to occur early (i.e., prior to formally declaring the major) in the undergraduate experience, significant losses continue, with roughly 25% of White students switching out after declaring their major and roughly 40% of URM students doing so.2 While there is no longer a significant ethnic/racial disparity (aggregated across URMs) between the baccalaureate and PhD stages (the combination of ~30% graduate admission rate and ~60% PhD completion rate for those admitted are similar for all groups, see Table 4.1), there is a large disparity at the undergraduate level. This culminates in a very low number of URM PhDs in physics and astronomy. This has obvious long-term consequences for the diversity of the profession at the postdoctoral level and beyond.

TABLE 4.1 Physics and Astronomy Synthetic Cohort from College First Year to PhD

U.S. Citizensa White URMb
First year, first-time undergraduates (2007)c 2,764,690 1,655,714 766,844
Estimated number intending physical sci major (2007)d 66,000 41,000 11,500
… of whom, __% complete physics or astronomy degrees 10% 11% 4%
Bachelor’s degrees in physics and astronomy (2012)e 6,664 4,596 473
… of whom, __% are admitted to graduate programs 29% Not known Not known
Entering grad programf in physics/astronomy (2012)e 1,937 Not known Not known
… of whom, __% complete the PhD in 6 years 59% Not known Not known
PhD in physics and astronomy (2018)e 1,151 805 76
Overall retention from bachelor’s to PhD 17% 18% 16%

a Includes citizens and permanent residents in the categories at right (White, URM) and those identifying as “other,” as well as racial/ethnic minority groups defined by the federal government as over-represented in STEM fields relative to their proportion in the population of U.S. citizens and permanent residents (e.g., Asian American).

b URM (underrepresented minority) refers to the racial/ethnic groups defined by the federal government as minorities who are underrepresented in STEM fields relative to their proportion in the population of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. URM groups so defined currently include African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans including Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians.

c Enrollment of first-time, first-year undergraduate students at all institutions, by citizenship, ethnicity, race, sex, and enrollment status, Table 2.2, 2004-14 (2013 Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2017. Special Report NSF 17-310. Arlington, VA., WMPD, www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd).

d Based on numbers in Appendix Table 2.16 Freshmen intending science and engineering (S&E) major by, by field, sex, and race or ethnicity, 1998-2012, [NSF Science and Engineering Indicators, 2016]. Unfortunately, the number of entering first-year students who intend to major specifically in physics or astronomy is not known.

e AIP Enrollments and Degrees Survey.

f Includes MS and PhD students.

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1 See Table 4.1 for definition.

2 See Chapter 2 of Talking About Leaving Revisited (Thiry et al. 2019).

Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
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FIGURE 4.1 Results from a study of undergraduate degree outcomes versus incoming student interests, by field. In contrast to other STEM disciplines like biology or social sciences, physical sciences lose ~90% of students arriving at college with an interest in those fields. SOURCE: Reproduced from M. Molinaro, Center for Educational Effectiveness, University of California, Davis, as published in Bradforth, S. E., E. R. Miller, W. R. Dichtel, A. K. Leibovich, A. L. Feig, J. D. Martin, K. S. Bjorkman, Z. D. Schultz, and T. L. Smith. 2015. University learning: Improve undergraduate science education. Nature 523:282-284.
Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
×

Indeed, the severity of, and the disparity at, the undergraduate “pinch point” results in a very small number of PhDs from minoritized communities in the disciplines most relevant to NASA mission leadership. For example, the number of African Americans and Hispanic Americans combined receiving PhDs in astronomy in any given year has never exceeded single digits, and the number of African American PhDs in astronomy in any given year over the past decade has averaged ~1 (see Figure 4.2). In the case of Native Americans, a total of 3 Native Hawaiians have received a PhD in astronomy over the past 50+ years of available statistics (data not shown) (NASEM 2021).

Finding: The number of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans combined receiving PhDs in astronomy in any given year has never exceeded single digits, the number of African American PhDs in astronomy in any given year over the past decade has averaged ~1, and the number of Native American PhDs in astronomy in any given year remain too small to count.

Conclusion 4-1: Significant and concerted efforts may be needed to ensure that the currently small pool of scientists of color have every opportunity to engage in NASA mission-related work and leadership.

Interestingly, while women continue to be highly underrepresented in physics and astronomy at all levels, there does not currently appear to be similar attrition from undergraduate to PhD levels, and even at the early-career faculty level, though a significant drop-off in representation still appears at senior ranks (see Figure 4.3). In addition, other physical science fields like chemistry demonstrate that representation at or near parity for women is possible all the way to the PhD level (see Figure 4.3 and NSF [2021d]). These patterns are consistent with longstanding gendered and racialized patterns of persistence and attrition in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in general and the physical sciences specifically (Thiry et al. 2019; NSF 2021d). As presented in the aggregate, it is also important to note that these patterns do not reflect potential for intersectional variation—for example, gender differences among Black or Latinx students or racial differences among women.

Finding: As the main disciplinary pathways to future NASA mission leadership, the physical sciences currently have a very small “market share” of college students (~2%). Only about 11% of White and Asian American students, and only about 4% of URM students, in the physical sciences persist to the baccalaureate degree in physics/astronomy.

Conclusion 4-2: The very low overall retention (~11%) in NASA SMD relevant disciplines during undergraduate training, and the accompanying racial/ethnic disparity (factor of ~3), is currently a major “pinch point’’ that restricts the size and diversity of the pool of PhD scientists for future NASA mission leadership.

Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
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FIGURE 4.2 Trends in physics and astronomy PhDs: (Top) Physics PhDs disaggregated by gender and citizenship status as well as race/ethnicity; (Middle) Astronomy PhDs disaggregated by race/ethnicity and gender. (Bottom) Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino American PhDs in physics and astronomy. SOURCE: Produced using data from the Statistical Research Center of the American Institute of Physics, see https://www.aip.org/statistics.
Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
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FIGURE 4.3 Percentage of students and faculty in physics, chemistry, and biology who are women at various academic stages in 2018. SOURCES: Based on data from Hazari (2018) and Porter and Ivie (2019).

THE ROLE OF AUTHENTIC RESEARCH EXPERIENCES

The fact that (a) such a large rate of attrition occurs among people who initially express a desire to pursue careers in NASA SMD-related disciplines, and (b) the largest point of attrition occurs early in the undergraduate experience, has been recognized by researchers for decades (NAS et al. 2007; Beasley 2011; NASEM 2020a). Seminal ethnographic studies such as Talking About Leaving (Seymour and Hewitt 1997), Talking About Leaving Revisited (Thiry et al. 2019), and Opting Out (Beasley 2011), along with four decades of research on these processes have documented the confluence of negative experiences that drive otherwise talented and capable students away from the science and engineering (S&E) fields. These reasons include, but are not limited to:

  1. The lack of opportunity for early and ongoing real research experiences (i.e., an emphasis on experiences with authentic research or “actually doing” science over pedantic “gateway” courses;3 see the National Academies report Undergraduate Research Experiences for STEM Students (NASEM 2017b) and lack of resources in schools and universities to involve students in such research;
  2. The culture and environment of S&E fields (i.e., a “weed out” mentality that eschews developing talent and instead rewards the few perceived to have “innate brilliance”);
  3. Structural racism, sexism and interpersonal attitudes and stereotypes (e.g., implicit biases) that deny marginalized and minoritized students access to essential training experiences, networks, etc.; and
  4. A desire to pursue careers that are perceived as having a community orientation (e.g., in contrast to addressing abstract questions of physics that are seen as divorced from or even as taking resources away from immediate and pressing health and safety needs of marginalized communities).

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3 The Howard Hughes Medical Institute Science Education program defines authentic research as experiences in which students: formulate and test a hypothesis to make a discovery; perform observational, descriptive, or computer-simulated research to interpret, organize, or analyze existing information in new ways; choose a topic, identify resources, and gather, analyze, and share their data; use creativity and inquiry to generate knowledge (not simply replicate or report what is already known); use the techniques of real research done in laboratories and/or in the field; and take ownership of their projects. In the context of this report, we take authentic research experiences to be those that prepare students for future NASA mission roles through involvement with real NASA mission-related work.

Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
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Finding: Research suggests that the major reasons for such large losses of URM talent along academic pathways include (1) the lack of opportunity for early and ongoing real research experiences (i.e., experiences with authentic research or “actually doing” science); (2) the culture and environment of STEM fields (e.g., a “weed out” mentality); (3) structural racism, sexism and interpersonal attitudes and stereotypes (e.g., implicit biases) that deny marginalized and minoritized students access to essential training experiences and networks; and (4) a perception that physics and astronomy are disconnected from the needs of the communities with whom students identify.

Finding: Decades of educational research suggest that early and ongoing experiences with authentic research—experiences that engage students not only in learning about but actually doing research—is key to retaining students generally and URM students specifically. In the context of this report, we take authentic research experiences to be those that prepare students for future NASA mission roles through involvement with real NASA mission-related work.

Not all of these factors can be addressed by NASA SMD, at least not directly. However, NASA SMD does have a significant opportunity to directly and uniquely impact the need for early and ongoing experiences with authentic research. Indeed, in the context of providing individuals with the sorts of research experiences that will prepare them specifically for future NASA mission roles. There is arguably no better preparation than experiences linked to actual NASA missions. Incorporating these experiences and opportunities into missions is best done by the mission teams themselves. This integration requires resources to implement as well as professional support (e.g., from NASA agency-wide efforts such as the Science Activation program). One key area for which mission leaders may need additional professional development and support is in the science of effective mentoring practices. The recent National Academies report The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM—and its associated online guide with tools for both mentors and mentees—can be leveraged as a resource for this purpose (NASEM 2019). As noted in that report, the demographic realities of pathways into STEM careers means that mentor-mentee relationships will likely involve individuals who do not share gender, racial, and ethnic identities. Such “non-homophilic” mentoring relationships can—and need to be—successful. Mentorship education for both mentors and mentees can help to ensure success. The National Academies report on effective mentorship also includes evidence-based curricula for mentors to enhance the effectiveness and cultural responsiveness of mentoring relationships, in particular to support the development of individuals from historically underrepresented groups in STEM.

In addition, ensuring that talent development is incorporated into mission design at the proposal stage will require that mission teams understand this to be clearly an expectation and thus a component of mission evaluation. Put plainly, a mission proposal would not be deemed as Excellent overall if its plan for engaging and developing diverse talent for future missions is short of Excellent.

Conclusion 4-3: NASA is uniquely positioned to provide individuals with the sorts of research experiences that are relevant to future mission roles, and there is arguably nothing more authentic than experiences linked to actual NASA missions.

THE VITAL ROLE OF PARTNERSHIPS WITH MINORITY SERVING INSTITUTIONS

The “pinch point” problem that appears to be endemic to the early undergraduate experience in the physical sciences (see Figure 4.1 above) is not in fact a universal feature of higher-education institutions. Many Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs)—including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs)—have achieved much better outcomes in retention and advancement of students of color generally, and especially in STEM disciplines. For example, according to a report from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) (Gasman et al. 2007), HBCUs make up just 3% of all institutions of higher education, yet (at the time of the AAUP report in 1996) the top ten producers of African American baccalaureates in the physical sciences are all HBCUs. More recent statistics (Diverse 2021) show that a few large, non-HBCU institutions have entered the top ten, but HBCUs still dominate the list. Moreover, of the top 15 colleges and universities that graduate African Americans who go on to earn PhDs in

Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
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STEM fields, 11 are HBCUs. Similarly, of the top 15 colleges and universities that graduate Hispanics or Latinos who go on to earn PhDs in STEM, 9 are HSIs (NAS et al. 2011; AIR 2014).

Finding: MSIs—including HBCUs, HSIs, and TCUs—represent a potentially large and diverse talent pool for future NASA missions. For example, HBCUs are consistently the majority of the top ten producers of African American baccalaureates in physics.

And yet historically, MSIs have received only a small portion of the federal R&D funding allocated to institutions of higher learning.4 The legacy of the disproportionate funding between predominantly White institutions (PWIs) and HBCUs can be seen in the current disparities in STEM facilities including laboratories and capacity for sustaining major programs of research at HBCU campuses. Not a single HBCU is a Carnegie R-1 institution, and therefore have not been targeted for the largest research investments, perpetuating a cycle of under-investment in research capacity. As a result, many HBCU campuses partner with PWIs on sizeable research endeavors and through dual-degree programs; this has implications for whether HBCUs are seen as strong candidates to lead a mission as the primary institution, unless institutional partnerships can be appropriately recognized as strengths in mission competitions (Newman and Jackson 2013).

More than 20 years ago, NASA SMD recognized the value of partnership with MSIs specifically in the context of NASA mission engagement and talent development, and also recognized the need for capacity building at many of these under-resourced institutions. NASA SMD created a special funding program called Minority University and College Education and Research Partnership Initiative (MUCERPI) (Sakimoto and Rosenthal 2005) that supported mutually beneficial partnerships between MSIs and major research institutions. The MUCERPI program operated from approximately 2000-2006, and though it existed for only a short time, some of the most successful and well-known programs of the past 20 years—such as the Fisk-Vanderbilt Masters-to-PhD Bridge Program (Stassun et al. 2011), the Columbia Bridge to the Doctorate Program,5 the CalBridge Program (Rudolph 2019), and others—got their funding start through MUCERPI.

These exemplar programs have in most cases been “bridge” type programs, through which minoritized students at the undergraduate level are trained in NASA mission relevant research and supported continuously across the transition into graduate-level training, through close partnerships with the MSIs that are the baccalaureate origins of so many of these students (see above). Importantly, these programs continue to be an integral part of the pathway to successful PhD access, especially for minoritized groups, as the programs intentionally capture a population of students who might otherwise be lost at the baccalaureate-to-PhD juncture. As noted in Table 4.1, ethnic/racial disparities (aggregated across URMs) from the baccalaureate to the PhD stages of education and training in physics and astronomy are no longer significant, which is a significant accomplishment in itself and argues for ongoing investment in these vital programs.

Finding: A previous NASA SMD-funded program, MUCERPI, focused on training in state-of-the-art research methods and preparation for future NASA leadership specifically through partnerships with minority-serving institutions, has been defunded.

Relatedly, it may also be worthwhile for NASA to consider the equivalent of NSFs EPSCOR kind of program (Melkers and Wu 2009; Wu 2010; Feldman et al. 2014). Indeed, for NASA to have impact on demographic and pipeline issues in mission leadership on decade timescales, investment may be needed at the state level with regards to building up institutional capacity. Thus, it may be beneficial to target funding specifically for areas of the country that could benefit from NASA investment in research to overcome the systemic biases emerging from well-established universities receiving a disproportionate majority of mission funding. To be sure, the recommended

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4 See, for example, Slaton (2010). For instance, during a time of legal separate but equal policies, the Maryland system president Harry Clifton Byrd invested $4 million in infrastructure at UMD College Park and only $100,000 at the HBCU UMD Eastern Shore. From 1940-1949 UMD College Park had an operating budget of $50 million and Eastern Shore had a budget of $500,000. This systematic denial of resources severely limited opportunities for Black participation in STEM.

5 Columbia University, “Bridge to the PH.D. Program in STEM,” https://bridgetophd.facultydiversity.columbia.edu.

Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
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NASA partnerships with MSIs can go a long way to address this; the geographic distribution of MSIs and of EPSCOR states overlap substantially.

THE ROLE OF NASA AGENCY-WIDE EFFORTS

NASA coordinates, at several levels within the organization, a number of diversity and inclusion efforts aimed at improving preparation and early access to research. At the top-most level, NASA has recently launched Mission Equity, an agency-wide assessment of all things NASA does, from procurements and grants, to programs and policies, to examine the obstacles to participation and partnership faced by underrepresented and underserved communities. From within SMD, Science Activation (SciAct), partners with educators to improve U.S. science literacy and advance national education goals. SciAct interacts with educators in every state, supporting collaborative efforts aimed largely at K-12 and informal education, through a broad and congruent ecosystem of activities that align with the federal Co-STEM efforts.

In response to a programmatic review by the National Academies’ Board on Science Education (NASEM 2020b), SciAct has further focused their top-level goals through mid-level objectives, including better leveraging of “enhancing connections to” the NASA SMD assets (i.e., those missions the Directorate administers, the research scientists who develop and use those facilities, and the scientific data that is produced). Those objectives also include more directed efforts to reach diverse communities. The National Academies report also recognized that moving away from “the 1% model,” while reducing some redundancy, limits access to some of those SMD assets, and that SciAct should look to further engage SMD missions and their scientists in these early education and preparation efforts (NASEM 2020b).

Finding: SMD has the unique assets of access to missions, scientists, and data that can be applied to enhancing education and early research experiences, and improving preparation.

The Office of STEM Engagement (OSTEM) strives to enhance K-12 and postsecondary education and access to NASA-wide projects through a centralized office. OSTEM has a specific focus of strengthening support for underrepresented communities, addressing Presidential Executive orders on promoting equal opportunity to URMs,6 Asian and Pacific Islanders,7 for participation in federally sponsored programs. NASA Minority University Research and Education Programs (MUREP), which is built off of the successes of the MUCERPI program, provides competitive awards to HBCUs and other MSIs for research involving NASA projects. The MUREP Institutional Research Opportunity (MIRO) further builds upon these opportunities, by increasing institutional competitiveness through infrastructure advancement, analogous to the NSF Mid-scale RI-2. These pan-agency efforts can be leveraged to help institutional partners and NASA itself address some of the attitudinal, cultural, and messaging issues.

Conclusion 4-4: MUREP and MIRO through NASA’s OSTEM provide specific engagement to underrepresented and underserved communities in STEM, and develop the research capacity and infrastructure of MSIs in areas of strategic importance and value to NASA’s mission and national priorities. Further partnership among NASA SMD, OSTEM and MSIs, and leveraging NASA’s unique assets, would strengthen URM participation in missions.

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6 These include Executive Order 13532, “Historically Black Colleges and Universities,” Executive Order 13555, “White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics,” and Executive Order 13592, “Improving American Indian and Alaska Native Educational Opportunities and Strengthening Tribal Colleges and Universities.”

7 Executive Order 13515, “Asian American and Pacific Islander Community.”

Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
×

THE STEM RESEARCH PATHWAYS IN THE NASA MISSION LEADERSHIP CONTEXT

The pathways that students take through the higher-education experience discussed above and then into professional careers can be represented through a braided river schematic such as developed for an American Geophysical Union (AGU) Eos article on the STEM workforce (Batchelor et al. 2021). Figure 4.4 captures this concept for the STEM workforce with proximity to NASA spaceflight missions, with different entry and exit points along the way into the stream of NASA mission experience or principal investigator (PI) status. The figure also attempts to illustrate the multiple opportunities as well as barriers to entry into the river of NASA mission experience. Notably, not all individuals coming into the workforce from the top of the schematic will end up in the PI reservoir in the bottom; they may decide (or be pressured) to leave the field, or they may wind up in one of a myriad other scientific or management roles. However, all researchers that become PIs will need to flow through one of the pathways visualized here.

It is important to note that mission leadership includes other critical team members in addition to PIs, such as Co-Is, deputy PIs, and project scientists, who all play key roles in shaping the science of the mission. Some of these roles can serve as critical stepping stones on the way to becoming a PI. At the same time, some individuals may never aspire to become a PI, preferring the science aspect of missions over management; yet they still play important leadership roles. In fact, the space science community is beginning to more fully recognize the complexities of how science is organized and how teams are rewarded. Indeed, broader recognition of the various kinds of leadership roles in missions suggests that monitoring and assessing mission team diversity is as important as tracking PI demographics.

At least part of the drop in the percentage of women at senior career levels in physics illustrated in Figure 4.3 can be explained by the variation over time in the percentage of PhDs awarded to women in physics and astronomy (Ivie and Nies 2003) (see Figure 3.2). There are clearly structural and cultural factors that encourage some people and discourage others along the career pathways, as reported in the open-ended questions in workforce surveys (White et al. 2011b; Pold and Ivie 2018) and echo decades of research into persistence in STEM.8 The traditions and cultural norms of the four SMD divisions are different and. recent National Academies decadal surveys,9 acknowledging these differences, include working groups for addressing the state of the profession for a specific SMD division and making recommendations for improving the climate and diversifying the corresponding workforce. Additionally, a significant number of white papers10 submitted for decadal surveys describe a diversity of issues faced by women of all races/ethnicities and men from underrepresented groups at different career stages. Chapter 5 of this report includes more discussion of specific barriers and opportunities for space scientists describes along pathways to mission PI-ship as illustrated in Figure 4.4.

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8 See Chapter 5 for detailed review of structural, organizational, interpersonal, and intra-personal barriers. Also see NSF (2021d) and Thiry et al. (2019).

9 NASEM, “Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032,” https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/planetaryscience-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032.

10 Published white papers for Astro2020 Decadal on Astronomy and Astrophysics are available at https://baas.aas.org/astro2020-science, and submitted white papers for Planetary and Astrobiology Decadal 2023-2032 are available at https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032.

Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
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FIGURE 4.4 Schematic of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics workforce in proximity to NASA mission experience following the “braided river” concept. The pathways to principal investigator are illustrated, with multiple entry and exit points along the way.
Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
×
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Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
×
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Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
×
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Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
×
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Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
×
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Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
×
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Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
×
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Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
×
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Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
×
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Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
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Suggested Citation:"4 Pathways into Space Sciences." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26385.
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Fostering diverse and inclusive teams that are highly skilled, innovative, and productive is critical for maintaining U.S. leadership in space exploration. In recent years, NASA has taken steps to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) in their workforce by releasing its equity action plan, emphasizing how diverse and inclusive teams help maximize scientific returns, and requiring DEIA plans as part of announcements of opportunities. To further its efforts to advance DEIA, the Agency requested the National Academies undertake a study to evaluate ways NASA can address the lack of diversity in space mission leadership.

Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions outlines near and long-term actions NASA can take to make opportunities for leadership and involvement in competed space missions more accessible, inclusive, and equitable. Report recommendations range from changes to the mission proposal process to investments in STEM education and career pathways. This report makes 15 recommendations for advancing DEIA within NASA's Science Mission Directorate divisions that support competed space mission programs. However, many of the report's recommendations could also be applied broadly to research at NASA and other federal agencies and institutions, leading to a more diverse research workforce.

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