The Good Project Receives Continued Support from the Henry Luce Foundation through their Women in STEM Program

The Good Project Receives Continued Support from the Henry Luce Foundation through their Women in STEM Program

The Good Project is pleased to announce continued support from the Henry Luce Foundation of a new one-year grant through their Women in STEM Program. This funding builds on a successful pilot study examining intellectual risk-taking in undergraduate computer science classrooms (you may find an announcement of the pilot work here).

Intellectual risk-taking is a key part of learning. It includes asking questions, sharing ideas that are still taking shape, and working through uncertainty with others. These moments help students learn, but, despite best efforts, they do not happen equally in every classroom.

During the pilot phase, our research team worked with faculty and students to better understand how intellectual risk-taking is experienced in undergraduate computer science courses. Through interviews, focus groups, and surveys, we refined both our understanding of the construct and the survey we are developing to measure it.

This next phase of the project will broaden the research in several ways. We will work with additional colleges and universities and expand beyond computer science to include students from other academic disciplines. This larger study will allow us to examine how intellectual risk-taking varies across different learning environments and fields of study.

As the project grows, we will continue refining and validating the survey. We also hope to better understand the classroom practices and institutional conditions that encourage students to engage with uncertainty, participate fully, and learn from one another.

We are grateful to the Henry Luce Foundation for its continued support. Their investment makes it possible to extend this work to new settings and deepen our understanding of how intellectual risk-taking shapes learning in STEM education.