Black students face repeated racial microaggressions that may challenge their mental health and academic performance in engineering doctoral programs. Researchers attribute this to stereotypes and institutional climates that juxtapose their STEM and racial identities as incongruent. In this article, we analyzed the perceptions of environmental, behavioral, and verbal racial microaggressions of 33 Black doctoral students and postdocs, with a focus on their interactions with non‐Black peers. Data were collected through semi‐structured interviews with Black doctoral students from 11 Predominantly White Institutions in the United States. To analyze the experiences of our participants, we utilized two theoretical frameworks: Racial microaggressions and identity nonverification. Across the interviews, participants described various forms of racial microaggressions that greatly challenged their sense of belonging and identities as engineers. This research affirms the need to develop initiatives at the departmental and institutional levels to encourage more inclusive spaces for diverse students in STEM doctoral programs and to combat the types of exclusionary practices found in this study.
This qualitative study collected recommendations provided by Black doctoral students in engineering to explicitly inform the institutional efforts necessary to enhance their academic experiences. This process has informed what needs to be done to support Black students through their direct accounts that provided in-depth understanding of the impactful yet missing components in their engineering pursuits, and especially, at the Ph.D. level. Situated in the theories of racialized organizations, this community-based participatory action research project conducted semi-structured interviews with n = 24 Black doctoral students enrolled in engineering programs across the United States (and one abroad). Four recommendations themes emerged from our analysis: (1) a vital need for greater representation of Black scholars across roles in engineering communities; (2) capacity for awareness, acknowledgment, and accountability of/for the lived experience of Black scholars in engineering; (3) more intentional institutional efforts to support Black scholar communities and connection; and (4) a need for re-envisioning institutional policies and practices impacting Black scholars. This paper will address that which Black students identify as missing in engineering academic environments that, if addressed, could stand to drastically improve the lived experience of Black engineering students. Institutions must be proactive in their accountability for the wellness and success for all students and can start by taking heed to the recommendations of Black doctoral students, specifically.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10438021
- Publisher / Repository:
- SAGE Publications
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Policy Futures in Education
- Volume:
- 22
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 1478-2103
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 893-909
- Size(s):
- p. 893-909
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
more » « less
Abstract -
more » « less
Abstract Background Black engineering graduate students represent a critical and understudied population in engineering education. Gaining an understanding of the lived experiences of Black engineering graduate students while they are simultaneously weathering two pandemics, COVID‐19 and systemic racism, is of paramount importance.
Purpose/Hypothesis Black engineering graduate students hold a unique duality, as both Black people in the United States and Black graduate students in US engineering programs that espouse white supremacist ideals. Their real‐world experiences necessitate understanding, and this paper highlights the related impact on the students themselves, their adaptations to the pandemics, and how those adaptations relate to and affect their support needs and navigation of their engineering academic environments.
Design/Method An interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach was combined with community‐based participatory action research and was situated in Boykin's Triple Quandary. A family check‐in was conducted with 10 Black engineering graduate students enrolled in doctoral programs across the country to delve deep into their lived experience as a cultural community.
Results Findings include an emergent framework of Black engineering graduate student values in response to the pandemics. These values aligned with the Black Cultural Ethos, demonstrating an adoption of collectivistic cultural values in times of crises. Further, COVID‐19 and systemic racism differentially impacted Black engineering graduate students and, thus, the manifestations of their values.
Conclusion For institutions to be able to effectively support their Black engineering graduate students, they must gain awareness of the students' experiences, values, and needs, in general, and amid crises specifically. The findings presented here provide a critical window into this information.
-
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.more » « less
-
IRE STEM Scholars program contributes to the national need for well-educated STEM professionals by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Over its six year duration, this project will fund scholarships to 120 unique full-time students. The IRE STEM Scholars Program provides a financially sustainable pathway for students across the nation to graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering and up to two years of industry experience. Students typically complete their first two years of engineering coursework at community colleges across the country. Students then join IRE and spend one transitional semester gaining training and experience to equip them with the technical, design, and professional skills needed to succeed in the engineering workforce; it is during this semester that students receive the S-STEM scholarship. During the last two years of their education, IRE students work in paid engineering co-ops, while being supported in their technical and professional development by professors, learning facilitators, and their own peers. The IRE STEM Scholars project financially supports low-income students during the transitional semester, which has two financial challenges: university tuition costs are higher than their previous community college costs, and the semester occurs before they are able to earn an engineering co-op income. In addition, the project provides personalized mentorship throughout students’ pathway to graduation, such as weekly conversations with a mentor. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates. As part of the scope of this project, a concurrent mixed-methods research study will be done on engineering students’ thriving, specifically their identity, belonging, motivation, and subjective wellbeing (or mental and physical health). This study will address the following research questions: How do undergraduate students’ engineering identity and belongingness develop over time in a co-op-based engineering program? How do undergraduate students’ motivation and identity connect to overall wellbeing in a co-op-based engineering program? Currently in its second year, the project has supported 20 students, including 6 students on co-op. These six students have been interviewed on their sense of belonging in engineering during their co-op experiences, and have provided multiple survey data points describing IRE students’ experiences in co-op and overall sense of belonging. These IRE STEM Scholars program participant-specific data along with survey data documenting the co-op experiences of all IRE students describe how co-op experiences can be used to provide a financially responsible pathway to an engineering degree for low-income, high achieving students. Future work will utilize these values to identify ways to better support the IRE STEM scholars’ identity development as they move into their first co-op experiences. This project is funded by NSF’s Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, which seeks to increase the number of low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need who earn degrees in STEM fields. It also aims to improve the education of future STEM workers, and to generate knowledge about academic success, retention, transfer, graduation, and academic/career pathways of low-income students.more » « less
-
In 2016, an NSF S-STEM grant was awarded to explore the connection between student support networks and success within collegiate STEM field majors. For this on-going diversity study, promising students with low socio-economic status were selected from a pool of low socio-economic status applicants that were denied admission straight into engineering, but given admission into the university. These Rising Scholars were invited into a scholarship program based upon the quality of their support networks and their readiness for higher education. Local research on institutional efficacy supported the concept that student success and satisfaction with the collegiate experience were directly related to how welcome and comfortable the student felt within their chosen academic field. The students need to feel that they are part of a larger community that values them and their contributions. Advocacy organizations and smaller engineering schools, like Agricultural & Biological Engineering, do a good job creating this welcoming climate for their students. The Rising Scholar program was designed to create a local, familial cultural reference point for the students and utilize existing successful elements of the local university environment. Multiple experiential elements, professional communication exercises, and social opportunities were provided to enhance student skills and contact networks. The students were provided numerous chances for interaction and were continually reminded about networking strategies. Initial retention and GPA data support the conclusion that these students can be very successful in a highly ranked, R1 institution when provided with sufficient mentoring and means to reduce the financial burden of attendance.more » « less
