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1. How women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer physics doctoral students navigate graduate education: The roles of professional environments and social networks

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.20.020115  

   Gutzwa, Justin A; Barthelemy, Ramón S; Amaral, Camila; Swirtz, Madison; Traxler, Adrienne; Henderson, Charles (September 2024, Physical Review Physics Education Research)

   Despite knowing physics and astronomy doctoral programs are laden with identity-based inequities, they continue to push minoritized students to the margins. This qualitative social network analysis of 100 women and/or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and more ( $\mathrm{LGBT}+$) physics and astronomy Ph.D.’s explores how minoritized physics and astronomy students utilize social networks to navigate departmental exclusion. Our findings indicate that many of the participants’ identities were often unacknowledged or negatively addressed within their graduate education, with only four participants reporting a positive or favorable experience during this period of their career. Direct support from peers, faculty, and identity-based affinity groups was necessary for participants to navigate their educations. This study demonstrated that generic best practices often cannot fully support the diverse range of persons who come to physics and that identity-neutral values in physics further isolate students by insinuating that their own minoritized experiences are not valid. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

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2. Physics Ph.D. student perspectives on the importance and difficulty of finding a research group

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.20.010136  

   Verostek, Mike; Miller, Casey W; Zwickl, Benjamin M (May 2024, Physical Review Physics Education Research)

   Joining a research group is one of the most important events on a graduate student’s path to becoming an independent physics researcher and earning a Ph.D. However, graduate students’ perspectives on the experience of finding a research group are not well documented in the literature. Understanding these perspectives is crucial for evaluating whether departments are providing students with adequate support while they search for a research group, and how difficulties during this process contribute to attrition. Semistructured interviews with $N=20$first and second year physics Ph.D. students reveal that incoming graduate students see joining a research group as a significant decision, and recognize that it may impact whether they will be able to complete the program. We found that students who struggled to find a group felt isolated and worried about falling behind their peers, whereas students who were able to immerse themselves in a positive group environment reported increased sense of belonging in their programs. The process of finding a research group often held differential importance for students identifying as women and nonbinary, who at times reported having to deprioritize their preferred research topic in order to be part of a more inclusive working environment. Although incoming graduate students characterized joining a research group as a significant decision, they often felt unprepared to make it. Moreover, they perceived an overall lack of guidance and structure from their departments, and characterized coursework as a barrier to searching for a group. Our findings suggest that providing students with better support during their group search process could help improve retention, particularly for traditionally underrepresented students, and improve students’ overall satisfaction in their graduate programs. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

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3. BOARD # 287: NSF S-STEM: Advancing STEM Undergraduate Success and Persistence through Scholarship, Mentorship, and Increased Sense of Belonging

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--55651  

   Chang, Jen-Mei; Trajkovic, Jelena; Galvez, Gino (June 2025, ASEE Conferences)

   This paper examines the impact of a National Science Foundation Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (NSF S-STEM) Program at a large, Minority-Serving institution in the western U.S. Despite growing efforts to diversify STEM fields, underrepresented minority (URM) students continue to face significant challenges in persistence and success. This scholarship program addresses these challenges by providing financial support, faculty and peer mentorship, and skills development opportunities to academically talented and low-income URM STEM students. This study evaluates how participation in the program enhances key noncognitive skills, such as students' sense of belonging, leadership and collaboration skills, and science identity, which are critical to STEM persistence. Using both survey and university-based data among the 47 participating scholars, results reveal that program participants report strong levels of sense of belonging, high efficacy in leadership and collaboration skills, and strong science/math identities. Additionally, compared to university rates, scholarship students showed above-average retention and graduation rates, with the majority pursuing graduate studies or careers in STEM. These findings highlight the importance of comprehensive support programs that integrate financial aid, mentorship, and professional development to promote persistence and success among URM students in STEM fields. 

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4. The Development of a Measure of Engineering Identity

   https://doi.org/10.18260/p.26122  

   Godwin, Allison (January 2016, ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   Measures of subject-related role identities in physics and math have been developed from research on the underlying constructs of identity in science education. The items for these measures capture three constructs of identity: students’ interest in the subject, students’ feeling of recognition by others, and students’ beliefs about their performance/competence in the subject area. In prior studies with late secondary and early post-secondary students, participants did not distinguish between performance beliefs (e.g., believing that they can do well in a particular subject) and competence beliefs (e.g., believing that they can understand a particular subject); therefore, performance/competence beliefs are measured as a single construct. These validated measures have been successful in predicting STEM career choices including physics, math, and engineering. Based on these measures of identity, literature on engineering identity, and my prior work on understanding engineering choice and belongingness through students’ science and math identities at the transition from high school to college, I developed a set of new engineering identity measures that capture and overall identification as an engineer, future engineering career identification, and students’ engineering-related interest, recognition, and performance/competence beliefs. I conducted a pilot survey of 371 first-year engineering students at three institutions within the U.S. during the spring semester of 2015. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed to examine the underlying structure of the piloted questions about students’ engineering identity. The measures loaded on three separate constructs that were consistent with the hypothesized constructs of interest, performance/competence and recognition. The developed items were used in a subsequent study deployed in the fall semester of 2015 that measured more than 2500 first-year engineering students’ attitudes and beliefs at four institutions within the U.S. The data on engineering identity measures from this second survey were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The results indicated that the developed measures do extract a significant portion of the average variance in the latent constructs and the internal consistency of the measures (Cronbach’s α) falls within the acceptable and better range. The development of these items provides ways for engineering education researchers to more deeply explore the underlying self-beliefs in students’ engineering identity formation through quantitative measures with strong evidence for validity. 

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5. An Examination of Perceived Climate, Identity and Belongingness among Undergraduate Women in Engineering

   Ali, S. (January 2021, 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access)

   More women than men in the US graduate college, but women constitute only 16% of the engineering workforce [1]. Women frequently attribute their lack of persistence in engineering to a chilly academic climate [2]. Researchers have suggested that developing a robust engineering identity could moderate a climate effect and support improved retention and graduation of female engineers [2]. However, there is little empirical data on interrelationships among gender, perceived academic climate in engineering programs, engineering identity, and belonging to an engineering community. We drew on social identity theory and extant literature to develop four research questions: 1) Are there any differences between men and women regarding perceived academic climate, sense of belonging, and engineering identity? 2) Does academic climate predict engineering identity in the same way for women and men? 3)Does sense of belonging mediate the relationship between perceived academic climate and engineering identity? 4) Do engineering students who are women demonstrate different relationships among perceived climate, engineering identity, and belongingness from men? We used survey data from a multi-year NSF-funded project (Award # 1726268, #1726088, and #1725880/2033129) that incorporated experimental course-based interventions to build an inclusive curriculum. Surveys were administered at the beginning and end of the semester. We found that at the end of the semester women engineering undergraduates reported lower engineering identity though the initial engineering identity, perceived academic climate, and sense of belonging were the same for both men and women engineering undergraduates. Multiple regression analyses with 601 first-year engineer majors (21% female) indicated perceived climate and gender accounted for 48% of engineering identity variability. The interaction between perceived climate and gender on engineering identity was not statistically significant. Mediation analysis revealed that sense of belonging (b=0.42, 95% CI [0.30, 0.53]) mediated the relationship between perceived climate and engineering identity for both males and females. Sense of belonging was critical in engineering identity. Moderated mediation analysis indicated gender did not moderate the indirect effect of perceived climate on engineering identity through a sense of belonging. 

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