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Title: Work in Progress: Building a Safe Queer Community in STEM—It Takes a Village to Support a Village
Recognizing the need to attract and retain the most talented individuals to STEM professions, the National Academies advocate that diversity in STEM must be a national priority. To build a diverse workforce, educators within engineering must continue working to create an inclusive environment to prevent historically underrepresented students from leaving the field. Additionally, previous research provides compelling evidence that diversity among students and faculty is crucially important to the intellectual and social development of all students, and failure to create an inclusive environment for minority students negatively affects both minority and majority students. The dearth of research on the experiences of LGBTQ individuals in engineering is a direct barrier to improving the climate for LGBTQ in our classrooms, departments and profession. Recent studies show that engineering can be a “chilly climate” for LGBTQ individuals where “passing and covering” demands are imposed by a hetero/cis-normative culture within the profession. The unwelcoming climate for LGBTQ individuals in engineering may be a key reason that they are more likely than non-LGBTQ peers to leave engineering. This project builds on the success of a previous exploratory project entitled Promoting LGBTQ Equality in Engineering through Virtual Communities of Practice (VCP), hosted by ASEE (EEC 1539140). This project will support engineering departments’ efforts to create LGBTQ-inclusive environments using knowledge generated from the original grant. Our research focuses on understanding how Community of Practice (COP) characteristics develop among STEM faculty who work to increase LGBTQ inclusion; how STEM faculty as part of the VCP develop a change agent identity, and what strategies are effective in reshaping norms and creating LGBTQ-inclusive STEM departments. Therefore, our guiding research question is: How does a Virtual Community of Practice of STEM faculty develop from a group committed to improving the culture for the LGBTQ community? To answer our research question, we designed a qualitative Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) study based on in-depth individual interviews. Our study participants are STEM faculty across all ranks and departments. Our sample includes 16 STEM faculty participants. After consulting with IPA experts to establish face validation, we piloted the interview protocol with three experienced qualitative researchers. The focus of this paper presents the results of the pilot study and preliminary themes from a sample of the 16 individual interviews. Most participants discussed the supportive and affirming nature of the community. Interestingly, the supportive culture of the virtual community led to members to translate support to LGBTQ students or colleagues at their home institution. Additionally, the participants spoke in detail about how the group supported their identity development as an educator and as a professional (e.g. engineering identity) in addition to seeking opportunities to combine their advocacy work with their research. Therefore, the supportive culture and safe space to negotiate identity development allows the current VCP to develop. Future work of the group will translate the research findings into practice through the iterative refinement of the community’s advocacy and education efforts including the Safe Zone workshops.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1748499 1935777
NSF-PAR ID:
10205927
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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