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This interdisciplinary, inter-institutional research initiation project is motivated by the need to develop practical strategies for broadening the participation of African American students in engineering. The central objective of the project is to conduct a comparative study of the factors affecting the success and pathways to engineering careers of African American students at a Predominantly White Institution (PWI), the University of Toledo, and a Historically Black University (Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University). Through this research we hope to gain insight into the factors affecting the social and academic well-being of students at PWIs and HBCUs from a psychological and anthropological perspective. For students from underrepresented groups in STEM at both HBCUs and PWIs it is generally recognized that social capital in the form of familial, peer and mentor support is critical to persistence in their major field of study. However, the role that embedded networks within student groups in general, and minority engineering affinity groups in particular, play in engineering students’ identity formation and academic success is not well understood. It is also not clear how other factors including institutional support and the attitudes and beliefs of faculty and staff toward underrepresented minority students affect the ability of these students to integrate into the social and academic systems at their institutions and how these factors influence the formation and development of their identities as engineers. Here we report on the role of membership in organizations for underrepresented minority engineering students such as the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) in contributing to the interlinking of personal and professional identities, and to the career pathways of African American students enrolled in PWI and HBCU, respectively.
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Comparative Study of the Effect of Numerical Majority and Non-majority Status on the Intersection of Professional and Cultural Identity of African American Engineering Students
Low enrollment, retention, and graduation rates of African American engineering students in the United States are a cause for concern [1]. Consequently, over the last decade there has been an upsurge of research identifying factors that have contributed to the problems encountered by African American students in higher education institutions in general, and in STEM fields in particular [2, 3]. The key factors identified as contributing to the attrition of minority African American students include perceptions of racism on campus, internalization of stereotypes, feelings of alienation and rejection, and inadequate support systems [4, 5]. In this context, considerations of institutional demographic characteristics, including the ethnic makeup of the student body is essential. Studies demonstrate that African American students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) experience lower levels of isolation and overt racism, and higher levels of retention compared to African American students in Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) [6, 7]. While some studies suggest that African American students experience lower levels of stereotype threat in HBCUs [8, 9], other studies indicate that there is little significant difference between students attending PWIs and HBCUs in their perceptions of stereotype threat. Based on qualitative and quantitative data from a national sample of engineering students, Brown, Morning, and Watkins report that students enrolled in HBCUs had more favorable perceptions of their college experience and that the higher graduation rate of African American students in HBCUs compared to their PWI counterparts could be attributed to lower perceptions of racism and discrimination [10]. It may be that the levels of stereotype threat experienced in the two types of institutions are different [11]. Based on the literature reviewed, the purpose of this study is to examine whether African American engineering students’ numerical majority status in HBCUs enhances the compatibility between their racial and professional identities and facilitates their integration; while their numerical minority status in PWIs diminishes the compatibility of the two social identities and stymies their integration. We examine this issue within the Social Identity and the Identity-focused Cultural Ecological Perspective theories. Before we turn to the two theoretical frameworks we describe the multiple context-dependent representations of majority-minority status with particular focus on African American college students in the United States.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1640553
- PAR ID:
- 10078844
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2018 CoNECD - The Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity Conference
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 22681
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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