Maura Borrego

This study extends research on the chilly climate faced by LGBTQIA+ STEM students by applying concepts of microclimates and navigational capital to understand the nuances of how students traversed various campus spaces and how practitioners might better support them. Students contrasted STEM and non-STEM spaces, drawing on navigational strategies including observation and identity modulation (e.g., covering and passing) to remain safe in hostile microclimates. Students sought explicit messages of LGBTQIA+ support to ensure their safety.

Graduate education is important for career and social mobility, but it is inaccessible to many students with disabilities. Prior research describes structural and societal barriers—including but not limited to ableism and discrimination—and their impact on graduate students with disabilities. This review discusses challenges unique to graduate education such as faculty-student power differentials, unwillingness to disclose disability for fear of appearing incapable, classification of graduate students as both students and employees, and limited applicability of formal accommodations beyond organized coursework. Informed by our lived experience as disabled graduate students and faculty, we conduct a qualitative evidence synthesis of 28 articles, theses, book chapters and reports into actionable steps graduate faculty can take to mentor and support graduate students with disabilities. Using a mentoring-across-difference framework, we endorse reciprocal mentoring relationships that support trust, mutual learning, and sustained connection between mentors and mentees. Recommendations range from developing trust, questioning ableist disciplinary and graduate program norms, advocating for students and helping students develop advocacy skills, and providing scaffolding for disabled graduate students’ learning and professional development.

Abstract: The queered model of multiple dimensions of identity (Q-MMDI) is applied to interviews with 12 LGBTQIA+ undergraduates and graduate students in cis-heteronormative STEM disciplines. Participants were recruited from a STEM course or reading group with discussion of literature on queer experiences. Our application of the four Q-MMDI components (cis-heteronormative context, desire for acceptance, identity performatives, and becoming as an ongoing identity process) allow for framing and expansion of former LGBTQIA+ experiences. Context interacts with desire, as participants described expectations for being accepted in a cis-heteronormative disciplinary environment. Performativity is related to becoming, or the ongoing process of developing identity through action, reflection, and optimism for the future. Courses and reading groups played an important role in validating student experiences, allowing them to express LGBTQIA+ identities in STEM spaces and increasing their community and expectations for acceptance in STEM organizations. The underutilized Q-MMDI extends the theory to STEM disciplinary spaces.

Abstract A majority of engineering postgraduate students (Master’s and PhD) enter into jobs in industry, government, and non-profit organizations. However, most postgraduate programming is geared toward careers in academia. Our study examines how universities prepare engineering postgraduate students for careers outside of academia. We draw on interview data with administrators across 11 institutions and leverage an existing framework for organizational influences to identify how institutions leverage their organizational characteristics, organizational culture, and/or management strategies to prepare engineering postgraduate students for these careers. The highest-impact efforts were those that synergistically leveraged at least two organizational influences, such as utilizing an industry advisory board to design career-relevant curricula. We conclude with recommendations for how institutions can help their students be prepared for these career sectors.

Abstract Background Recent anti‐trans legislation reflects societal discrimination that extends to college campuses, negatively impacting the mental health and persistence of transgender students. Engineering is documented to be particularly hostile to trans and other LGBTQ+ students, but the experiences of transgender engineering students are severely understudied. Purpose The purpose of this work is to develop a greater understanding of the unique challenges and stressors that TGNC (transgender, gender non‐conforming) students face within engineering by analyzing the experiences of a transgender engineering student. Method This reflexive thematic analysis focuses on one student's experiences of coming out and social transition experiences while an engineering student. The student, who transitioned socially in the summer prior to the academic year she was interviewed, discussed how transitioning impacted her experiences within engineering. Gender minority stress theory frames the findings. Results The student experienced a hostile political climate in a state that did not value her safety or happiness. This broader context, combined with a masculine and heteronormative engineering climate, subtle anti‐trans sentiments expressed by peers, and frequent misgendering led to isolation, depression, and pressure to conceal her identity. After transitioning, she felt more othered by men students but experienced positive mental health impacts and closer relationships with women engineering students. Conclusions The burden of persisting in engineering should not fall entirely to TGNC students who may be struggling with belonging and mental health. Even in challenging political environments, engineering faculty can signal their support of trans students through use of pronouns and inclusive examples that do not reinforce binary gender and heteronormativity.

In the US and Europe, institutions, foundations and governments invest significant financial resources in doctoral fellowships. Unlike other graduate funding mechanisms, fellowships are typically not tied to specific projects or job responsibilities and thus may afford more agency to students. We examined how fellowship funding contributes to or undermines agency of doctoral student recipients. We interviewed 23 US engineering doctoral students primarily funded on a fellowship for at least one semester. We qualitatively analyzed the interviews, using inductive and deductive methods of coding. Participants described increased flexibility with their projects, advisor, and personal life; additional access to physical resources, people and networks, and research experiences; and feelings of internal validation and external recognition from fellowship awards. Contexts of advising, timing of fellowship, source of fellowship, financial circumstances, and fellowship structure influenced their experiences. Agentic perspectives and actions included choice of advisor and research projects, switching advisors if necessary, completing internships and visiting other labs, and enjoying a higher standard of living. Advisor support is a necessity for students funded on fellowships. Multi-year fellowships from external sources, in comparison to internal sources, more often supported agency. We make recommendations for institutions to structure and administer fellowships to better support students.

We apply Yosso's community cultural wealth (CCW) and Pennell's queer cultural capital frameworks to the experiences of LGBTQ+ STEM students. We conducted interviews with nine LGBTQ+ undergraduate STEM majors and coded for the seven forms of wealth defined by Yosso and Pennell to determine if these are valuable frameworks for understanding the experiences of LGBTQ+ STEM students. The study found that students displayed most forms of capital in navigating their STEM environments, and research could expand and adapt CCW to fit the unique experiences of LGBTQ+ students. Linguistic, social, and navigational forms of capital emerged as the most important, but we also found examples of aspirational, resistant and transgressive capital. In particular, we substantially expand examples of linguistic capital beyond the findings of prior research, and some of the first examples of transgressive capital in STEM students are identified as such.

LGBTQ+ students face hostile climates in engineering, yet few studies explore interventions that support queer student success. This interview study examines how participation in LGBTQ+ engineering reading groups helped 11 students develop queer cultural capital to navigate engineering. We demonstrate that through their development of queered forms of cultural capital including linguistic, familial, aspirational, navigational, and resistant capital, participants also developed emergent transgressive capital to move beyond boundaries and reject binaries. The reading group itself was created as a transgressive counterspace within a college of engineering and was structured to eliminate power differentials between undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. Participants rejected binaries in their use of pronouns and descriptions of their gender and sexual identities. Students credited the reading group for helping them realize there are other queer people succeeding in engineering. The reading group strengthened some participants' queer identities, prompting them to be out to more people, including listing the group on their resume for potential employers to see. Participants were inspired by the nonbinary faculty member leading the group and the authors whose work they read. Overall, the reading group allowed students to reframe their daily realities in engineering and imagine how they might make change in the future.

This article provides evidence and context for how college science teachers can employ a variety of strategies to reduce student resistance to active learning. Despite evidence supporting the many cognitive and affective benefits of active learning, college science instructors remain cautious due to anticipated student resistance. Prior research has demonstrated the efficacy of specific instructional strategies on reducing student resistance to active learning, and the current study explores their implementation in introductory science courses at community colleges and 4-year institutions. First, a detailed narrative of diverse student resistance reduction strategies used in a community college biology course employing active learning is presented. This narrative contributes to a nuanced understanding of how instructional strategies are combined and sequenced in a community college science course. Observation data collected from 24 STEM classrooms spanning various disciplines and institutions (n = 67 instances of active learning) is then presented. The observation instrument quantifies both instructor and student behavior, alongside classroom characteristics such as class size. Patterns are compared by institution type and STEM discipline.

This research paper explores what disabled students, both those with and without formal accommodations, want from their schools and instructors to better access their education.This work describes a range of barriers to equitable access to education, as experienced by undergraduates in their engineering classes.Additionally, it formalizes disabled engineering students' recommendations for university systems and instructors to ease the burden the students face.Recommendations include both instructor-and administrative-level supports. II. METHODS A. PositionalityBoth authors hold engineering degrees and identify as white, disabled women.The first author, whose disability affects her cognitive function, energy, and mobility, is working towards a graduate engineering degree.This research came to fruition out of the frustration we felt after the first author experienced numerous barriers to accommodations and faculty support during her first year of graduate school.We are motivated by this experience to increase accessibility in engineering education for disabled students, and by extension, all students.

The purpose of this scoping review is to describe how the literature has discussed and studied disability in undergraduate-level STEM courses in the United States. A Critical Disability Studies lens informed our inclusion criteria. We considered extensive lists of disability types and diagnoses and concluded that “disability” as a search term best captured educational experiences rather than medical approaches. After screening nearly 9000 abstracts, we identified a final set of 409 dissertations, articles, conference papers, commentaries, briefs and news items. Sources appeared in discipline-based education research (DBER), STEM disciplinary and education journals as well as DBER conferences. Under 10% of sources included 2-year college settings. The largest groups of sources focused on disability writ large (39%, vs. specific categories) and across STEM (38%, vs. specific disciplines). Students were the main research participants (80%). Instructors were the main target of recommendations (84%). In terms of solutions, the largest group (n = 111) advocated for Universal Design, followed by accommodations (n = 94), and technology developed or tested with persons with disabilities (n = 90). Sources which the authors framed as empirical studies less frequently disclosed positionality as a person with a disability (16%) than non-empirical sources (21%). Quantitative (n = 125), qualitative (n = 99), and mixed methods (n = 64) approaches were well-represented. The most common data collection methods were surveys, assessments or task completions (n = 161 sources), followed by interviews (n = 109), observations (n = 44), document analyses (n = 18), and institutional student records (n = 14). More research is needed that centers the experiences of students with disabilities, focuses on specific disability types, employs critical quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and otherwise avoids implicit deficit views of disabled students. Citations to the qualifying sources are available in a public Zotero library.

Abstract Background Engineering education and other discipline‐based education researchers may motivate their work with claims that STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) norms and culture are unique, thus requiring focused study. As research on disabled students gains momentum in engineering education, it is important to understand differences that limit generalizability of prior work in other disciplines to STEM. Purpose What do studies document as differences between STEM and non‐STEM settings that impact disabled undergraduates, and to what extent are these studies using asset‐based perspectives of disability? Scope/Method This systematic review identified US studies that compared STEM to non‐STEM disciplines in regards to disabled undergraduate students. The qualifying studies, published during 1979–2023, comprise 22 journal articles and 15 doctoral or master's theses. Most studies used quantitative methods ( n = 28). Results Of the 37 qualifying studies, 20 instructor studies provided moderate evidence that STEM instructors are less willing or less knowledgeable about how to support disabled students through accommodations or course design. We highlight a small number of student studies identifying assets of disabled students, although most took a deficit view by comparing disabled student experiences to an able‐bodied norm. Few studies emphasized the structural characteristics of STEM such as culture and educational practices that contribute to socially constructing disability by acting as barriers that disable students. Conclusions More work is needed to examine instructor actions beyond their intentions and attitudes toward disabled students. Critical and asset‐based perspectives are needed in future study designs that center disability to uncover systemic barriers and identify assets disabled students bring to STEM.

In this paper, we describe and evaluate a graduate mentoring program named “First ChEnnections,” organized by the department of chemical engineering and later expanded to all engineering departments at a large, public research institution in the Southwest U.S. The main goal of this program was to develop a community to support first-year PhD students in […]

Used in higher education for many decades, seed grants are now beginning to be applied as a strategy to advance diversity, equity and inclusion goals, including rebuilding community post-pandemic. There is little research on the effectiveness of seed grants for such communal goals. This work is innovative in two key ways. First, these seed grants focus on promoting a strong sense of community at the institution rather than promoting individual investigators and research projects. Second, engaging students and staff as principal investigators (PIs) disrupts power structures in the academy. We present a systematic analysis of seed grant project reports (n = 45) and survey data (n = 56) from two seed grant programs implemented at the same institution. A diverse set of projects was proposed and funded. Projects had a positive impact on awardees and their departments and colleges. Seed grant program activities were successful at building community among awardees and recognizing individual efforts. Most noteworthy are the career development opportunities for graduate students, postdocs and staff, which are afforded by changes to PI eligibility. We conclude that seed grant programs have the potential for organizational learning and change around community building in higher education.

This research paper explores the experiences of engineering college students identifying as disabled, the number of which is increasing each year. In the U.S., students with disabilities struggle to navigate university systems to obtain accommodations. In addition to onerous accommodation procedures, additional barriers include the inflexible nature of engineering curricula, many demands on student time for lab and project work, and the attitudes of some faculty. These are examples of how ableism, or the prejudice against those with disabilities, is rooted in engineering culture. It is well documented that disabled STEM students are less likely to access accommodations than their peers with disabilities in other majors. We interviewed 11 disabled undergraduate engineers at a large public university in the Southern United States. Most students felt that engineering instructors lack understanding and compassion about disability. While discussing instructors' willingness to accommodate, students often described poor practices that only partially fulfilled accommodations and labeled the interactions themselves as “alienating” and “isolating.” Students with minors or second majors stated their non-engineering instructors were not only more enthusiastic about implementing accommodations, but offered support beyond formal accommodations like checking in throughout the semester and asking if there were additional access needs the student needed to succeed. We argue that ableism in engineering instructors is passed down to students and prevents those with disabilities from accepting offered accommodations and advocating for themselves, while lowering their threshold for what they believe qualifies as sufficient accommodation. From these findings we conclude that because engineering culture resists accommodations and lacks compassion, students have lowered their expectations of what proper accommodations means for engineering.

Abstract We present a systematic review of 29 empirical studies on disability and fieldwork in natural science, postsecondary educational settings. Undergraduate students with disabilities are underrepresented in STEM, and disciplines requiring major field components are some of the least diverse, at least in part because fieldwork has been traditionally viewed as hard, physical, and masculine. Disability Studies in Education (DSE) frames the research questions, inclusion criteria and results. Studies were coded by disability model used, barriers and strategies to accessibility in field science, and meaningful involvement of persons with disabilities in research on fieldwork education. Although most studies asserted a view of disability as a social, cultural, and political phenomenon, some deficit language and interpretations persisted. Few studies included author positionality, and even fewer disclosed author disability status. The main instructional recommendations emphasize flexibility and adaptability, presuming student competence and making small‐scale changes consistently over time. Multiple studies emphasize the need for proactive planning, including robust contingency plans, and explaining how these plans can negate the need for complex modification. Twenty‐four additional non‐empirical studies are identified as resources for discipline‐specific guides and checklists for inclusive fieldwork. We conclude that important steps are being taken to investigate and critique barriers to fieldwork participation for students with disabilities, but there is still much work to be done in addressing systemic barriers beyond the control of individual instructors.

In this study, we examined the relation between university students' sense of course-level belongingness and their affective and behavioral response to active learning, theorizing that students' affective response would mediate the relationship between their sense of course-level belongingness and their behavioral response.Additionally, we examined the moderating influence of students' gender identity on all three constructs.Our results did not support the theorized mediating influence of students' affective response on the relation between students' belongingness and their behavioral response.In addition, we found that, despite mean differences in belongingness, affective response, and behavioral response, there were few gender differences in the pattern of relations.For both female-and male-identifying students, belongingness predicted both students' affective and behavioral responses.These findings suggest that course-level belongingness plays an essential role in how students respond to active learning and that fostering an atmosphere that supports belongingness may benefit all students.

is a first-generation college student who dreamed big.As the eldest of

Our research paper examines the role of climate (e.g., interactions with others) in the skill development of engineering and physical science doctoral students.Skill development in graduate school often occurs related to students' primary funding mechanism, in which they might interact with a research group or teaching team.Advisors also play a pivotal role in the engineering doctoral student experience; however, less is known about how positive mentoring influences skill development for engineering doctoral students.We investigated the following research questions: 1) How, if at all, do interactions with advisor(s), faculty, and peers predict skill development (associated with primary funding mechanism) for engineering and physical science doctoral students?2) Specifically, how do such interactions predict skill development (associated with primary funding mechanism) for the following career-related skills: a)

Abstract Background In addition to the benefits of a diverse faculty, many institutions are under pressure from students and administrators to increase the number of faculty from historically excluded backgrounds. Despite increases in the numbers of engineering PhD earners from these groups, the percentages of Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino tenure‐track faculty have not increased, and the percentage of women remains low. Purpose The purpose of this study is to identify how experiences in graduate school encourage or deter PhD earners from historically excluded groups in pursuing an engineering academic career. Method We conducted 20 semi‐structured interviews with engineering PhD students and recent graduates, with half of participants interested and half disinterested in pursuing an academic career after graduation. Results Three key factors emerged as strongly influential on participants' desire to pursue an academic career: their relationship with their advisor, their perception of their advisor's work–life balance, and their perception of the culture of academia. Participants extrapolated their experiences in graduate school to their imagined lives as faculty. The results illuminate the reasons why engineering PhD earners from historically underrepresented groups remain in or leave the academic career pathway after graduate school. Conclusions The findings of this study have important implications for how graduate students' and postdoc's relationships with their advisors as well as perceptions of their advisors' work–life balances and the culture of academia affect future faculty. We make recommendations on what students, faculty, and administrators can do to create a more inclusive environment to encourage students from historically excluded groups to consider academic careers.

Abstract We summarize national-scale data for Ph.D. earners in engineering or computer science from 2015 to 2019 whose post-graduate school employment is known, highlighting outcomes for biological/biomedical/biosystems engineering students. We use NSF’s Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED), which has collected information from Ph.D. recipients in the USA since 1957. The data are collected at the time of degree completion and constitute a greater than 90% response rate. Compared to all engineering and computer science disciplines, biological/biomedical/biosystems engineering has a higher proportion going to 4yr/med/research institutions (52% vs. 33%) and non-profit (3.6% vs. 2.9%) and lower proportion going to industry (33% vs. 48%), government (4.3% vs. 8.4%), and is similar for non-US positions (6.1% vs. 5.7%). Compared to 2010–2014 biological/biomedical/biosystems engineering Ph.D. recipients, more 2015–2019 recipients are going to industry (25% to 33%) and fewer to 4yr/med/research institutions (59% to 52%) and governmet (5.3% to 4.3%). Across all engineering and computer science disciplines, a smaller proportion of females entered industry (43%) compared to males (49%), while a larger proportion of females entered 4yr/med/research institutions (37%) compared to males (32%). Over half of Asian doctoral recipients entered industry, as compared to 38% of Hispanic doctoral recipients. In contrast, a higher proportion of Hispanic individuals (37%) entered 4yr/med/research institutions after their doctoral programs, as compared to 31% of Asian doctoral recipients. Black doctoral recipients had the highest proportion enter positions in government (14%) and non-profit (4%) sectors. Our results are situated in the broader literature focused on postdoctoral career, training, and employment sectors and trends in STEM. We discuss implications for graduate programs, policymakers, and researchers.

Abstract Whether doctoral students are funded primarily by fellowships, research assistantships, or teaching assistantships impacts their degree completion, time to degree, learning outcomes, and short- and long-term career outcomes. Variations in funding patterns have been studied at the broad field level but not comparing engineering sub-disciplines. We addressed two research questions: How do PhD student funding mechanisms vary across engineering sub-disciplines? And how does variation in funding mechanisms across engineering sub-disciplines map onto the larger STEM disciplinary landscape? We analyzed 103,373 engineering and computing responses to the U.S. Survey of Earned Doctorates collected between 2007 and 2016. We conducted analysis of variance with Bonferroni post hoc comparisons to examine variation in funding across sub-disciplines. Then, we conducted a k-means cluster analysis on percentage variables for fellowship, research, and teaching assistantship funding mechanism with STEM sub-discipline as the unit of analysis. A statistically significantly greater percentage of biomedical/biological engineering doctoral students were funded via a fellowship, compared to every other engineering sub-discipline. Consequently, biomedical/biological engineering had significantly lower proportions of students supported via research and teaching assistantships than nearly all other engineering sub-disciplines. We identified five clusters. The majority of engineering sub-disciplines grouped together into a cluster with high research assistantships and low teaching assistantships. Biomedical/biological engineering clustered in the high fellowships grouping with most other biological sciences but no other engineering sub-disciplines. Biomedical/biological engineering behaves much more like biological and life sciences in utilizing fellowships to fund graduate students, far more than other engineering sub-disciplines. Our study provides further evidence of the prevalence of fellowships in life sciences and how it stretches into biomedical/biological engineering. The majority of engineering sub-disciplines relied more on research assistantships to fund graduate study. The lack of uniformity provides an opportunity to diversify student experiences during their graduate programs but also necessitates an awareness to the advantages and disadvantages that different funding portfolios can bestow on students.

Engineering from Colorado School of Mines.Brandon is conducting research on the modes of resistance LGBTQIA+ students utilize in response to the

Abstract This lessons learned paper describes the shifts made in a university makerspace in the spring and fall of 2020. Interviews with the manager of the makerspace, the director of curriculum for the space, and engineering faculty members before and during the COVID-19 pandemic identify specific lessons learned around the staffing, organization, and instructional strategies used in the space. As the state of the university and makerspace shifted throughout the summer of 2020, numerous faculty development efforts were implemented within the college of engineering to support the use of the makerspace in the engineering curriculum. Prior to the spring of 2020, over 4,000 students and thirty two courses within the college of engineering were using the makerspace to support student learning in their classes. Artifacts including images, videos, and student products also demonstrate the results of the instructional and pedagogical shifts throughout the pandemic. Specific lessons learned include: a more refined focus on inclusive practices in faculty development programs, strategic reorganization of the furniture and equipment within the space, software development to support student and faculty engagement, and other pedagogical shifts to support learning. These lessons learned can inform faculty developers in the support and training of engineering and university faculty as they continue to navigate the shift required from the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, outside of lessons learned, this paper will also identify areas of needed support to continue student and faculty engagement in the makerspace. The researchers anticipate these lessons learned presented in a lightening talk format during the 2021 ASEE conference.

and self-reported

Abstract Background: The proliferation of various programs devoted to diversity and inclusion in recent years has signified a broader shift toward fostering changes in engineering education. Many engineering institutions have begun to create inclusive spaces for marginalized students. However, constructing inclusive spaces still presents a challenge for engineering institutions, as students who peruse these spaces often come from diverse backgrounds and have multiple marginalized, intersectional identities. This research project describes how some spaces designed to be inclusive may have cultural scripts – cultural norms, values, and practices associated with social interactions in a space – that isolate some students from participating fully in those spaces. Method: Nine LGBTQ+-identifying undergraduate electrical engineering students attended one of four semi-structured focus groups during spring 2019 at a large public flagship university in the southern United States. Participants were recruited through an initial survey of general well-being administered to about 1500 students in the electrical engineering department of the host university, on which students were asked to identify as non-LGBTQ+ or LGBTQ+. The participants were not compensated for participating in this study. One of the authors facilitated the focus groups with the participants. At the beginning of the focus groups, the facilitator read a statement that prompted the participants to consider their multiple identities, including racial identity, gender identity, religious identity, etc. The focus groups were transcribed and coded by one author in two iterations by applying a grounded theory methodology. First, inductive and deductive codes from the transcripts were generated through an open coding technique. Second, after the codes were refined, axial codes were generated, and the transcripts were re-coded. To ensure reliability and validity, the lead author created research memos as reflective writing tools throughout the process. After each iteration of coding and memo-ing, all authors discussed the codes to ensure the reliability and validity of the coding scheme. From the data, we selected two participants, Parker and Jordan, to be the foci of this paper. Parker and Jordan were chosen because they elicited their experiences at the intersection of several marginalized identities in greater detail than any other participant. In the following paragraphs quotes indicate direct statements from the participants. Positionality: As a gay Asian man and an undergraduate electrical engineering student in the same school as the study population, the lead author leveraged the cultural knowledges of the school and department to establish rapport with the students during the focus groups. Bringing this perspective to both the focus group facilitation and my coding and analysis process afforded me a unique window into the lived experiences of these participants. Results/Discussion: Parker, a graduating senior electrical engineering student, identified as a non-binary, straight, Malayali person who uses he/him pronouns. In his experiences, he highlighted how he felt significantly excluded in both engineering and non-engineering spaces, including spaces intended to embrace inclusion, due to cultural scripts that he felt he could not subscribe to. Jordan, a third-year electrical engineering student, identified as a queer, pansexual, cisgender woman using she/her pronouns. In her experiences, she mentioned how she felt she needed to showcase a certain marginalized identity to exist in certain spaces intended for certain marginalized people. We present each student's experiences separately in the following paragraphs. Parker Parker was an extremely active member in both engineering-related and non-engineering-related on-campus activities. Splitting his time between participating in engineering activities and broader campus-wide recreational activities, and a leadership position in a campus-wide multicultural organization, Parker had several firsthand accounts of the different cultures that inhabited the different spaces at the university. To Parker, the culture of engineering was extremely "competitive," "cutthroat," "judgy", and overwhelmingly hypermasculine. Such a culture made him distinctly uncomfortable, especially since he had come into the school with no prior engineering experience and felt that he could not prove himself or legitimize his existence in the engineering space. For Parker, the MEC presented an inclusive space that was intended to give him the chance to be himself. Yet this space was also uncomfortable for Parker, as many of the inhabitants made cultural references, such as the latest music from queer artists or recent trends in queer culture, that he did not know about or identify with. Parker's accounts of his inhabited spaces led to his expression that he was at the center of an internal "tug-of-war" between the extremely heteronormative, meritocratic, stifling culture of engineering and the extremely open, deviant, non-conforming culture of the MEC. Each space had its own specific form of rituals, and each culture carried certain expectations to which he felt pressure to conform to legitimize his existence in that space. As a result, Parker perceived that each culture was so concentrated and so antithetical to the other that he simply did not belong in either: "too non-conforming for engineering and not non-conforming enough" to fully engage in the resources and people at the MEC. Parker's feelings of isolation in both spaces showcase how institutional resources, in supporting marginalized identities, may cultivate an environment in which some identities are not embraced. Jordan Jordan was also heavily involved in on-campus student organizations, participating in various diversity-centered engineering student organizations catered to traditionally underrepresented groups in engineering. Jordan found that these student organizations allowed her to associate with a more diverse group of engineering students, a welcome change from the overwhelmingly homogeneous, white, male culture of engineering. However, she still felt incomplete when she participated in these organizations, as they often focused on one identity. While Jordan acknowledges that these groups are often targeted toward a specific group of marginalized people, she noted that her experiences are a product of all her identities, not just the one(s) that each student organization chooses to highlight. For Jordan, participating in diversity-focused engineering student organizations came at a cost: participating in specific diversity organizations caused her to rank her identities, prioritizing some identities over others in certain spaces. If she chose to participate in one organization, then her decision may force her to not participate in another organization, and that choice, from her perspective, reflected which identities she felt more strongly about. Furthermore, in such focused spaces, Jordan felt that it was "not the time" to talk about other identities not related to the organization's aims (e.g. being Latina in WECE). Jordan's need to choose and rank her identities to participate in diversity-centered student organizations illuminates how inclusive spaces intended for specific groups of people may serve as a barrier for those with multiple identities. Parker and Jordan In both Parker's and Jordan's experiences, the culture of inclusive spaces placed implicit cultural restrictions on their multiple identities. For Parker, the culture that pervaded the electrical engineering space felt too conforming for him and the multicultural engagement center relied on cultural knowledges of non-conformity that he was not aware of or comfortable with, ultimately leading to his lack of sense of belonging in either space. For Jordan, to participate in diversity-centered student organizations, she had to prioritize certain identities of her multiple intersectional identities over others, creating an environment where her choices to participate in certain organizations became, in her eyes, a reflection of which identities she valued more. These experiences showcase how inclusive spaces can exclude certain people by virtue of the cultural scripts that inhabit them. Implications/Conclusion: The experiences of Parker and Jordan illustrate ways in which inclusive spaces are limited and potential ways for inclusive spaces to take a more intersectional approach to embracing marginalized communities. By embracing specific marginalized identities and elevating their cultural scripts to the forefront of the spaces, inclusive spaces may isolate those who may identify as part of a marginalized group but not subscribe to or be familiar with all of the group's cultural scripts. Other students, like Parker and Jordan, may feel like they cannot belong in the inclusive space and therefore cannot fully embrace their identities in the space. Inclusive spaces therefore must consider ways to help students feel comfortable enough to express all their identities, not just the dominant ones highlighted by the space. Further research is needed in this emerging area to identify specific aspects of inclusive spaces that may cause feelings of isolation and ways for inclusive spaces to welcome these students.

Abstract Keywords: Graduate Race/Ethnicity 1st Generation Engineering and Computer Science There is a large literature demonstrating differential access to bachelor's degree programs in engineering and computer science based on an individual's race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Much of these access issues can be explained based on historical and systemic inequities that form reinforcing feedback loops. White students whose parents attended college tend to attend high schools and have access to information that helps position their college applications to be competitive for "elite schools" based on what university admissions offices prioritize in their decisions. There is also evidence demonstrating that where a student attends college for undergraduate will influence future outcomes such as job placement and career earnings—attending such an "elite school" can have multiplying effects on an individual's future. Although we are encouraged by some recent efforts to shift resources to postsecondary institutions that have historically not benefited from an inequitable higher education system, that similar reinforcing feedback loop persists at the undergraduate level based on school ranking, and racially minoritized and first generation students are underrepresented in highly ranked schools. That kind of inter-institutional stratification is also present at the graduate level, as research has shown that attending "elite" graduate programs influence later career outcomes, including, for example, higher rates of working in tenure track academic positions, jobs with higher salaries, and access to prestigious awards such as the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship program. Thus, at every stage of education, where one attends school matters for subsequent outcomes. At the same time, obtaining a postsecondary education, in particular an education in engineering or computer science, has been described as a mechanism that enables upward mobility and a way to reduce inequality. In this session, we will interrogate that line of thinking given the stratification in the system and investigate the extent to which students tend to remain within certain strata of institutions. We will consider the extent to which movement between tiers of institutions (based on rankings in this analysis) tends to happen from students' undergraduate institution of attendance to both Master's and PhD institutions of attendance. Additionally, we will explore the extent to which students' race/ethnicity and status as a first generation college student matters for mobility between tiers of institutions. This session will present analysis based on data from the National Science Foundation's Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED). The SED is characterized by comprehensive coverage of doctoral recipients from institutions in the United States. Using a combination of self-administered paper surveys, web-based surveys, and computer-assisted telephone interviews, graduate schools typically require SED responses at the time of degree completion. In FY17, for example. 91.4% of the 54,664 individuals who were granted a research doctorate completed the SED, who respond to questions regarding their education paths, funding mechanisms during graduate school, and future career trajectories. Our session will draw on variables related to students' parents' education levels, race/ethnicity, and institutions of attendance for bachelor's, Master's, and doctoral degrees. We will present "flows" of students across different institutional characteristics, including ranking, by students' race/ethnicity and first generation in college status, as well as regression analyses.

They are conducting

Their research revolves around investigating how LGBTQ+ students resist the hostile culture of engineering and, more broadly, STEM. They mentor a group of LGBTQ+ undergraduate engineers and investigate the collective resistance by LGBTQ+ students through student driven organizations with them. They are especially interested in rethinking

This evidence-based practice paper describes and evaluates the first year of a postdoctoral professional development early career fellowship program. The aim of this program was to identify promising early career scholars from atypical backgrounds, such as research areas or identities underrepresented in their discipline, and further develop them into more competitive faculty candidates. We evaluated four main goals of the program: providing professional development activities; facilitating the transition to tenure track positions; creating a network of peers and mentors; and attracting faculty candidates that value diversity, equity, and inclusion to the University. To achieve these goals, the program assigned mentors to each fellow and supplied professional development activities centered on the needs of future faculty members. Thirty fellows from the first cohort were invited to complete a semi-structured interview sharing their experiences in the program. Nine main themes emerged through data analysis: program goals, how program goals were accomplished, program community building, what mentorship means to fellows, relationships with mentors, cohort camaraderie, emphasis on recognition, location matters, and critical consciousness. With the fellows' positive reception of this program, the program evaluation will not only refine offerings for later cohorts, but it will also assist similar programs' construction and evaluation in the future.

Abstract The Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) program, managed by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), provides grants to institutions of higher education to disburse scholarships for low-income, high-achieving domestic students enrolled in a STEM major. Despite the crucial role that two-year colleges (2YCs) epitomize in providing open-access affordable education to a diverse student population, the majority of NSF S-STEM scholarships are awarded to four-year institutions, which tend to have specialized personnel working on the preparation and submission of proposals. In this paper, we report a summary of the activities and evaluation of a [BLINDED] workshop, funded by the NSF S-STEM program, aiming to facilitate submissions to the NSF S-STEM program from two-year colleges (2YCs). The workshop was offered in 2019 (in person) and in 2020 and 2021 (virtual), initially to support 2YCs in the Western region of the US and was expanded nationwide in 2020. During participation in the two-day workshop, several aspects of proposal submission were reviewed, in particular, the two NSF Merit Review Criteria of Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts. Pre- and post- workshop support was also available via virtual office hours and webinars that addressed specific elements required to be included in S-STEM proposals. The evaluation of the workshop has been performed via post-workshop survey administered through Qualtrics™. A journal paper reporting on the evaluation of all three offerings of the workshop has been submitted and currently in review. In this paper, we intend to reflect on the successful features of this workshop series and the lessons learned throughout the three offerings. Over three years, 2019, 2020 and 2021, the program supported 103 participants on 51 teams from 2YCs. The program assisted at least 31 2YCs submit their S-STEM proposals to NSF, and 12 of these 2YCs received S-STEM grants. An additional 2YC proposal was first recommended for an award, but the proposal was subsequently declined for reasons unconnected to the content of proposal itself. The 3-year funding rate is 39%; if the above-mentioned proposal that received an award recommendation but was then declined is taken into account, the award rate is 42%.

Abstract This paper will highlight a small subsection of a larger scale project that focuses on increasing the use of active learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classrooms. Our overall project goals seek to expand the adoption of active learning in STEM classrooms. Active learning has been shown to improve student grades, retention rates, and overall understanding of course material. We define active learning as any time an instructor goes beyond lecturing to their students (e.g., think-pair-shares, class discussions). Research has shown adoption of active learning in STEM courses has been slow with one common cited reason for not implementing active learning in their courses is the fear of student resistance. Student resistance can be defined as any negative student reaction to active learning (e.g., distracting others, giving lower course evaluations, or refusing to participate in the activity). For this study, we recruited instructors from across the nation in the Summer of 2021 and collected data from instructors and students from Fall 2021-Winter 2022. During recruitment, we paid particular attention on ensuring we were recruiting instructors from a broad swath of institution types, including doctoral granting institutions, community colleges, and everything in between. While much of the research on active learning has focused on 4-year schools, this research aims to elucidate what active learning looks like in community colleges, as well as community college student perspectives on these activities. Additional data will share common strategies used for implementing active learning that differ between community college and four-year settings. This paper focuses on how instructors teaching at community colleges are using active learning in their classrooms and their attitudes towards active learning. Additionally, we will explore the instructor's self-efficacy towards using active learning in the hopes of having a better overall understanding of what is occurring in STEM community college classrooms and where potential improvements can be made in terms of faculty development.

Identity, or how people choose to define themselves, is gaining traction as an explanation for who pursues and persists in engineering.A number of quantitative studies have developed scales for predicting engineering identity in undergraduate students.However, the outcome measure of identity is sometimes based on a single item.In this paper, we present the results of a new two-item scale.The scale is adapted from an existing measure of identification with an organization that was developed by Bergami and Bagozzi [1] and refined by Bartel [2].The measure focuses on the "cognitive (i.e., self-categorization) component of identification" (p.556), and has been found to have high convergent validity with another, rigorous measure of identification with an organization or other entity created by Mael and Ashforth [3].This measure utilizes one primarily visual and one verbal item to assess the extent to which an individual cognitively categorizes himself or herself as an engineer.The scale was administered to 1528 engineering undergraduate students during the 2016-2017 academic year.Internal consistency of the new engineering identity scale, as measured by Cronbach's alpha, is 0.84.This new scale is an important step toward refining quantitative measures of, and the study of, engineering identity development in undergraduate students and other populations.

His dissertation work investigates the impact of cellular microenvironment on cardiomyocyte differentiation

Abstract Due to the safety risks and potential for program disruptions posed by the on-going COVID pandemic, our REU Site transitioned to a fully virtual offering for summer 2021. In this paper, we share our experiences in offering our REU Site online, with an emphasis on lessons learned that can benefit our Site and others post-pandemic. The paper includes evaluation data collected via surveys, focus groups, and interviews with undergraduate research Scholars and their mentors.

Abstract This paper will provide an update on our research studying instructor development in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classrooms. We aim to increase the adoption of active learning in STEM classrooms, given that active learning has been shown to improve student retention rates, grades, understanding of course material. We define active learning as any time an instructor goes beyond simply lecturing to their students. One of the common reasons instructors cite for not implementing active learning in their courses is the fear of student resistance, which can be defined as any negative student reaction to active learning, including distracting others, giving lower course evaluations, or refusing to participate in the activity. For this study, we created a faculty development workshop to educate STEM instructors on what active learning is and ways to implement active learning into their classrooms. An additional goal of this workshop was to provide instructors with evidence-based strategies that focus on reducing student resistance to active learning. This study is a randomized control trial (RCT) that will study the impact of this workshop on STEM instructors' attitudes and behavior towards using active learning in their classrooms as well as their use of strategies for reducing student resistance to active learning. Instructors were recruited in the summer of 2021 from schools across the US and we ensured that we had a sample that included a wide range of institutions, from community colleges to R1 institutions. Once recruited, participants randomly assigned to a control or intervention group in the fall semester of 2021. Instructors were (or will be) surveyed four times throughout the course of the study. Survey waves 1 and 4 were completed at the beginning of the Fall 2021 and Winter/Spring 2022 semesters, respectively, while survey waves 2 and 3 were completed in the middle of the Fall 2021 semester, timed to be before and after the workshop intervention in order to test the effectiveness of this workshop. The data for this project is currently being collected, and this paper will focus on our progress. We will also discuss preliminary data as well as next steps for the project.