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1. Re-framing and Reimagining the Doctoral Student Narrative: Black Women’s Experiences in Engineering and Computer Science

   Artis, S.; Shavers, M.; LeSure, S; Spencer, B.; Joshi, A. (June 2018, American Society of Engineering Education)

   Recent data reveal that a higher percentage of Black women (9.7%) are enrolled in college than any other group, topping Asian women (8.7%), White women (7.1%) and White men (6.1%). Despite these gains in college attendance, Black women are often underrepresented in the fields of engineering and computer science. This paper presents the findings from a qualitative study that investigated the identity and experiences of Black women who are pursuing doctoral degrees in engineering and computer science. This research is grounded on the tenet that one cannot effectively serve or impact a community until he/she genuinely understands the issues and challenges facing the people who are its members. This work explores how Black female doctoral students persist in environments where they are grossly underrepresented. Content analysis is used to examine interview data obtained from 13 Black women who are pursing doctoral degrees in engineering and computer science. This paper concludes with some of the key challenges these women face in their programs on a daily basis. The goal of this research is to bring awareness to not only the challenges, but also potential strategies to increase the retention and persistence of Black women in engineering and computer science across all academic levels. 

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2. Current Trends in Attrition Considerations of Graduate Engineering Students in the United States

   Bahnson, M.; Berdanier, C.G.P (January 2023, International journal of engineering education)

   Available attrition statistics for graduate engineering students do not adequately inform current attrition research because they focus on degree completion rather than attrition or early departure; aggregate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students; and reflect out-of-date data. While recently some work has begun to explore doctoral attrition qualitatively, the purpose of this study is to describe current trends in graduate engineering students’ consideration of departure from their programs of study by capturing current numerical data specific to engineering about students’ recent attrition considerations. This is important because, since the last studies were conducted, higher education systems have experienced a global pandemic, economic downturn, and sociopolitical turmoil in the United States. Graduate students (n = 2204) in the U.S. completed a survey. The sample includes master’s (n = 535) and doctorate (n = 1646) degree-seeking students from 27 engineering disciplines and includes U.S. domestic and international populations. A majority of students considered leaving their degree program in the month before they took the survey: nearly 70% of Ph.D. and 39% of master’s students, while 31% of Ph.D. and 16% of master’s students seriously considered leaving their program without their degree. Descriptive statistics provide early departure considerations by engineering discipline, gender identity, race/ethnicity, nationality, and year in program by degree sought. Comparisons between groups are presented for gender, nationality, and career stage. It is essential to have an updated and discipline-specific benchmark of attrition considerations for continued engineering education research purposes, for mentorship, and for administrative purposes. Early departure from graduate school remains a threat to innovation and broadening participation in engineering and the professoriate. 

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3. Identity Dilemmas, Cultural Homelessness and Intersectionality: A Discourse Analysis of the Experiences of a Female Undergraduate International and Transracial Adoptee in Engineering (Research)

   Kali, Maimuna Begum; Secules, Stephen (July 2023, ASEE annual conference exposition)

   Abstract Background: Engineering education research on inclusion has helped understand the challenges and better the experiences of underrepresented and marginalized groups (e.g., LGBTQ+, disabled individuals, and first-generation college students). In contrast, populations at the intersection of multiple forms of marginalization are harder to support and not as well represented in the literature. As each identity group can have a unique experience of educational culture, attention to intersectionality necessitates more nuance and specificity in our understanding. Theoretical framework: Cultural homelessness occurs when an individual lacks a cultural frame of reference to fit into existing racial, ethnic, or cultural categories. We argue that students can develop a sense of cultural homelessness via the experience of multiple systems of oppression. Purpose: In this article, we explore how a female transracial adoptee undergraduate engineering student describes her experiences in engineering and the challenges she faces due to having complex identities by employing the notions of intersectionality and cultural home/lessness. Method: This study is part of a larger project that examines aspects of students’ experiences and identities that are overlooked, misunderstood or marginalized in engineering. In this paper, we focus on a single participant, Amber, a female transracial adoptee with anxiety and depression in the 4th year of her engineering program at a Predominantly White Institution (PWI). We used narrative and discourse analysis techniques to examine the experience and characterization of her identity within or outside of a cultural home. Findings: The findings demonstrate cultural homelessness in how Amber expresses an “outsider” identity and two different identity dilemmas that she experiences in life and academic settings. Implications: The study has implications for how we support students from multiply marginalized groups and calls for us to actively and intentionally include groups that are usually overlooked or underexplored. As intersectionality creates nuanced and divergent experiences among all of us, it is crucial to attend to these nuances when investigating engineering marginalization and strive to create a holistically inclusive culture. 

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4. Knowledge gains in a professional development workshop on diversity, equity, inclusion, and implicit bias in academia

   https://doi.org/10.1152/advan.00164.2019  

   Harrison-Bernard, Lisa M.; Augustus-Wallace, Allison C.; Souza-Smith, Flavia M.; Tsien, Fern; Casey, Gregory P.; Gunaldo, Tina P. (September 2020, Advances in Physiology Education)

   null (Ed.)

   As literature indicates, historic racism and implicit bias throughout academia have been profound metrics leading to a lack of diversity, as related to people from underrepresented groups according to race and ethnicity, among biomedical sciences graduate students in U.S. universities. Recognizing such challenges, a team of biomedical scientists and inclusivity educators developed and implemented a pilot training program within an academic health sciences center as an initial step to educate faculty and staff regarding their roles in the promotion of an inclusive academic environment, receptive to all students, including underrepresented students. The 3-h workshop included didactic modules, videos, teaching modules, and active attendee participation. Faculty and staff were presented common terminology and ways to promote the development of an inclusive and diverse academic workforce. Compared with pre-workshop, post-workshop survey results indicated a statistically significant improvement in attendee knowledge of correctly identifying definitions of “implicit bias,” “status leveling,” “color-blind racial attitudes,” “tokenism,” and “failure to differentiate.” Additionally, by the end of the workshop, participants had a statistically significant increase in self-perceptions regarding the importance of improving diversity and recognizing biases and stereotypes in graduate education, knowing what to say when interacting with people from different cultures, and the ability to acknowledge bias when mentoring students from groups underrepresented in the biomedical field. This preliminary initiative was successful in the introduction of faculty and staff to the importance of fostering an inclusive academic environment and thereby developing a diverse workforce. 

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5. Lived Experiences of African American Engineering Students at a PWI Through the Lens of Navigational Capital

   Damas, S.; Benson, L. (February 2022, 2022 CoNECD (Collaborative Network for Engineering & Computing Diversity))

   There are significant disparities between the conferring of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) bachelor’s degrees to minoritized groups and the number of STEM faculty that represent minoritized groups at four-year predominantly White institutions (PWIs). Studies show that as of 2019, African American faculty at PWIs have increased by only 2.3% in the last 20 years. This study explores the ways in which this imbalance affects minoritized students in engineering majors. Our research objective is to describe the ways in which African American students navigate their way to success in an engineering program at a PWI where the minoritized faculty representation is less than 10%. In this study, we define success as completion of an undergraduate degree and matriculation into a Ph.D. program. Research shows that African American students struggle with feeling like the “outsider within” in graduate programs and that the engineering culture can permeate from undergraduate to graduate programs. We address our research objective by conducting interviews using navigational capital as our theoretical framework, which can be defined as resilience, academic invulnerability, and skills. These three concepts come together to denote the journey of an individual as they achieve success in an environment not created with them in mind. Navigational capital has been applied in education contexts to study minoritized groups, and specifically in engineering education to study the persistence of students of color. Research on navigational capital often focuses on how participants acquire resources from others. There is a limited focus on the experience of the student as the individual agent exercising their own navigational capital. Drawing from and adapting the framework of navigational capital, this study provides rich descriptions of the lived experiences of African American students in an engineering program at a PWI as they navigated their way to academic success in a system that was not designed with them in mind. This pilot study took place at a research-intensive, land grant PWI in the southeastern United States. We recruited two students who identify as African American and are in the first year of their Ph.D. program in an engineering major. Our interview protocol was adapted from a related study about student motivation, identity, and sense of belonging in engineering. After transcribing interviews with these participants, we began our qualitative analysis with a priori coding, drawing from the framework of navigational capital, to identify the experiences, connections, involvement, and resources the participants tapped into as they maneuvered their way to success in an undergraduate engineering program at a PWI. To identify other aspects of the participants’ experiences that were not reflected in that framework, we also used open coding. The results showed that the participants tapped into their navigational capital when they used experiences, connections, involvement, and resources to be resilient, academically invulnerable, and skillful. They learned from experiences (theirs or others’), capitalized on their connections, positioned themselves through involvement, and used their resources to achieve success in their engineering program. The participants identified their experiences, connections, and involvement. For example, one participant who came from a blended family (African American and White) drew from the experiences she had with her blended family. Her experiences helped her to understand the cultures of Black and White people. She was able to turn that into a skill to connect with others at her PWI. The point at which she took her familial experiences to use as a skill to maneuver her way to success at a PWI was an example of her navigational capital. Another participant capitalized on his connections to develop academic invulnerability. He was able to build his connections by making meaningful relationships with his classmates. He knew the importance of having reliable people to be there for him when he encountered a topic he did not understand. He cultivated an environment through relationships with classmates that set him up to achieve academic invulnerability in his classes. The participants spoke least about how they used their resources. The few mentions of resources were not distinct enough to make any substantial connection to the factors that denote navigational capital. The participants spoke explicitly about the PWI culture in their engineering department. From open coding, we identified the theme that participants did not expect to have role models in their major that looked like them and went into their undergraduate experience with the understanding that they will be the distinct minority in their classes. They did not make notable mention of how a lack of minority faculty affected their success. Upon acceptance, they took on the challenge of being a racial minority in exchange for a well-recognized degree they felt would have more value compared to engineering programs at other universities. They identified ways they maneuvered around their expectation that they would not have representative role models through their use of navigational capital. Integrating knowledge from the framework of navigational capital and its existing applications in engineering and education allows us the opportunity to learn from African American students that have succeeded in engineering programs with low minority faculty representation. The future directions of this work are to outline strategies that could enhance the path of minoritized engineering students towards success and to lay a foundation for understanding the use of navigational capital by minoritized students in engineering at PWIs. Students at PWIs can benefit from understanding their own navigational capital to help them identify ways to successfully navigate educational institutions. Students’ awareness of their capacity to maintain high levels of achievement, their connections to networks that facilitate navigation, and their ability to draw from experiences to enhance resilience provide them with the agency to unleash the invisible factors of their potential to be innovators in their collegiate and work environments. 

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