Academic talent matters in STEM, but talent alone isn’t enough to sustain persistence—the ability to continue working toward a goal despite challenges. Academically capable students can still struggle when they doubt themselves, lack support or connection, or face personal or institutional barriers.
Persistence isn’t just about “grit.” Even Angela Duckworth, who popularized the concept, now emphasizes the role of circumstances (Stripling, 2026). Many students face real barriers—financial pressure, competing responsibilities, environments where they don’t feel they belong—and institutions are responsible for addressing them. While barriers are a big part of the story, how students learn to respond matters too.
We often think of persistence as an inherent personal trait that cannot be cultivated, but it is better seen as a capacity that can be built. Alongside institutional support, students can strengthen the skills, mindset, and identity that help them move through challenges.
This article explores those capacities through five questions students can ask themselves—and mentors and programs can help them answer:
- How do I interpret and respond to my experiences?
- Who do I see myself becoming?
- Do I see myself as belonging in college and in STEM?
- Can I take ownership of what I need to do to move forward and act on it?
- Do I have the inner resources I need to keep going until I reach my goals?
How do I interpret and respond to my experiences?
The challenges students face are real, but their first thoughts about them aren’t necessarily facts. A poor exam grade is real; “I’m not capable of this” is an interpretation, which can shape how students respond and ultimately what actually happens next in reality (Jamieson et al., 2016).
Students can learn to examine their interpretations—”What am I telling myself this means? What else could it mean? What can I change? What support could I use?”—and, over time, choose productive responses and trust themselves to navigate challenges.
Mentors can support productive reinterpretation by reframing challenges as a normal part of learning, pointing out evidence of growth through difficulty, and redirecting students toward possibilities.
Who do I see myself becoming?
There’s a difference between simply attending college and actively recognizing, “I’m a student; this is something I do”.
That difference matters: how students see themselves can shape whether they envision a future in college and STEM. A stronger student identity is associated with greater commitment and intentions to persist (Bowman & Felix, 2017), while science identity has been associated with longer-term STEM persistence (Estrada et al., 2018).
Students can actively and intentionally participate in their own identity development through the stories they tell about themselves and the actions they practice. Among undergraduate STEM students, exploring identity by seeking information and reflecting on who they’re becoming was associated with stronger competence beliefs and greater value for the STEM major (Perez et al., 2014). By envisioning who they want to become, asking questions, seeking help, exercising agency, and working through difficulty, students practice being the engaged learners and future STEM professionals they hope to be.
Mentors can support identity development by naming what students’ actions represent, offering meaningful ways to participate and contribute, and connecting what they’re doing now to who they want to become.
Do I see myself as belonging in college and in STEM?
Belonging matters for persistence in STEM (Walton et al., 2023). Faculty, peers, programs, and institutions can foster belonging by making students feel welcomed and valued and by providing opportunities for connection and contribution.
Students can also actively create belonging. How they interpret and respond to their experiences can shape their sense of belonging— reaching out, participating, building relationships, and seeking connection can foster belonging for themselves and others.
Belonging is at once individual, collective, relational and institutional, shaped by students’ experiences, interpretations, and efforts; by their relationships with others; and by the environments in which students’ efforts are supported, welcomed and reciprocated.
Can I take ownership of what I need to do to move forward and act on it?
Agency means believing “I can move toward my goals” and then acting on that belief (Snyder, 2002). Self-efficacy, confidence in carrying out specific actions, supports agency: people are more likely to initiate and sustain effort when they believe they can do what’s required (Bandura, 1977).
Like belonging, agency is both independent and relational. It can mean making independent decisions, but it can also mean reaching out: asking a professor a question, going to tutoring, contacting financial aid, communicating a need, or self-advocating. Agency is developed when a student takes initiative.
But students can’t practice ownership if someone else, however well-intentioned, always steps in. Solving a manageable challenge can remove a student’s opportunity to decide, act, seek help, adapt, and discover, “I can figure out what to do when something goes wrong.” STEM mentorship guidance emphasizes mentees’ active participation and agency (NASEM, 2019).
Support shouldn’t mean rescue. Yeager (2024) calls this a “mentor mindset”: pairing high standards with high support, challenging students to do the work themselves while knowing someone will help them succeed. Ask: “What are your options? What information do you need? Who could help? What will you do next?” Provide enough support for students to navigate the challenge without taking it over.
Mentors can model healthy persistence by setting boundaries and recognizing their own limits, while programs build systems of support, so no single mentor has to be everything to every student.
Do I have the inner resources I need to keep going until I reach my goals?
Persistence isn’t just forward motion; it also means recovering when the path gets hard. Resilience—increasingly understood as a process rather than a fixed trait—involves adapting to adversity using internal and external resources (Fullerton et al., 2021). Students practice it when they regulate thoughts and emotions, seek support, change strategies, reflect on what worked, and try again.
Purpose gives that effort direction. In a randomized study, reflecting on challenges in light of students’ purpose for pursuing STEM improved authentic belonging, attitudes toward their major, and appraisals of stress (Diekman et al., 2024).
But healthy persistence has limits. A student overwhelmed by financial insecurity, caregiving, transportation, health needs, or an unmanageable workload may need resources more than a better mindset. S-STEM scholars report financial pressure, limited time, transportation challenges, and, for some, impostor feelings as barriers (Davis et al., 2025).
Persistence isn’t simply enduring everything. It requires the capacity to adapt, reasons to continue, resources to draw upon, and sufficient wellbeing to remain engaged.
Make Persistence Something Students Practice
Across all five questions, the common thread is practice. Telling students that challenge is normal, discussing agency, and talking about resilience are useful—but helping them interpret a real setback, make meaningful decisions, and reflect on an actual challenge gives them practice.
That means allowing productive friction—without removing every obstacle or asking students to endure barriers institutions should fix. Ultimately, S-STEM programs can ask more than “Are our students persisting?” We can ask: “What support does this student need to navigate this challenge and become more capable of navigating the next one? and How can our programs and relationships can help them develop those capacities and give them room to use them?”
In the end, talent may help students enter STEM, but persistence develops as they learn to navigate what happens next—through the relationships, resources, and environments that help them do it.
Additional Resources
How do I interpret and respond to my experiences?
Stanford University’s guide Challenging Unhelpful Thinking in College helps students recognize unhelpful thoughts and reframe them into more balanced ones. For more ways to thrive, click the Tips, Tools, & Resources link at the end of the page for strategies to help you succeed.
https://ctl.stanford.edu/students/challenging-unhelpful-thinking-college
Who do I see myself becoming?
UC Berkeley’s Discover Your Purpose offers eight guided practices that help students imagine their future selves, discover their strengths and values, and plan how to reach long-term goals.
https://ggie.berkeley.edu/collection/discover-your-purpose-eight-practices-for-middle-school-high-school-and-college/
Do I see myself as belonging in college and in STEM?
Rice University’s free textbook College Success Concise offers practical guidance for college students. Chapter 5 covers building connections, belonging, and a support network: https://openstax.org/books/college-success-concise/pages/5-introduction. Chapter 6 covers well-being, including self-efficacy, resilience, and managing stress: https://openstax.org/books/college-success-concise/pages/6-introduction
Can I take ownership of what I need to do to move forward and act on it?
eCampusOntario’s free textbook A Guide for Successful Students helps students take charge of their learning, including recognizing when they need help and advocating for themselves.
https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/studyprocaff2/open/download?type=pdf
Do I have the inner resources I need to keep going until I reach my goals?
Stanford’s research-tested Rethink Stress program helps students acknowledge pressure, welcome it as a sign that something matters, and use it as energy to keep going.
https://mbl.stanford.edu/resources/mindset-interventions/rethink-stress-intervention
Productive Friction
Schwartz’s essay The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research reframes uncertainty, not knowing, and feeling stuck as normal—and necessary—parts of doing science. That is, productive struggle is something scientists experience rather than evidence that they are not capable of STEM.
Schwartz, M. A. (2008). The importance of stupidity in scientific research. Journal of Cell Science, 121(11), 1771. https://doi.org/10.1242/jcs.033340
References
Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.191
Bowman, N. A., & Felix, V. (2017). It’s who I am: Student identity centrality and college student success. Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, 54(3), 235–247. https://doi.org/10.1080/19496591.2017.1331853
Davis, E., Taylor, J., Clinton, T., Olivar, S. M., Neering, K., Peters, K., & Rodgers, M. (2025). Bridging potential and opportunity: The experiences of NSF S-STEM scholars. S-STEM Resource and Evaluation Center, American Association for the Advancement of Science. https://sstemrec.aaas.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/NSF_S-STEM_REC_Y3_Outcomes_Impact_Report_Final.pdf
Diekman, A. B., Joshi, M. P., White, A. D., Tran, Q.-A. N., & Seth, J. (2024). Purpose reflection benefits minoritized students’ motivation and well-being in STEM. Scientific Reports, 14(1), Article 466. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-50302-1
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