– Black students are more likely to persist in a STEM major if they have a STEM course taught by a black instructor.
– Female students are less likely to persist when more of their STEM courses are taught by female instructors.
– The number of black STEM instructors has a positive influence on persistence of non-black students.
– The gender persistence gap is smaller in magnitude than the black-white persistence gap, but emerges even after the first semester and continues to increase after the sixth semester.
– After controlling for prior preparation, the gender gap does not significantly decrease. This suggests that more could be done within the college setting to improve persistence of women in STEM majors.
– Findings from this study would suggest that increasing the number of black faculty teaching introductory STEM courses would have a positive influence on improving persistence of black students.