Students with disabilities experience many barriers in higher education. Certain aspects of disciplinary culture may create more unwelcoming environments in engineering majors. The purpose of this literature review is to assess current scholarship describing the experiences of engineering students with disabilities as they engage in the accommodations process. Twelve studies met the criteria for this review. Common themes are that negative experiences are common; as students interact with instructors about disability and accommodations, there are various barriers to disclosure and using accommodations, including stigma, perceived negative attitudes of instructors, and costs for diagnosis; and instructor and institutional support are important to student success. When we can understand the structures that create barriers and unwelcoming climates for students with disabilities, as well as the supports and structures that create welcoming environments, then we can develop solutions that make engineering a more inclusive and equitable space.
U.S. military veterans and service members comprise a unique population in higher education that is worthy of particular attention. In this paper, we turned attention toward developing deeper understandings about student veteran and service member experiences in engineering education by researching with academic institutional agents who support them. Because strong institutional agent support is linked to college student success in engineering, especially for first-generation and underrepresented students, we qualitatively explored institutional agent awareness of, attitudes about, and perceptions of support for student veterans and service members in undergraduate engineering programs in public U.S. institutions. Situated within the social constructivist paradigm, we employed an emergent, qualitative research design derived from constructivist approaches to grounded theory methods. We interviewed 14 participants across seven institutions situated in the western United States. Participants were purposively selected based on their professional roles working with student veterans and service members in engineering at either an institutional or college level. Thematic analysis of interview data produced six major themes that we subsequently synthesized into an empirical model of holistic support for student veterans and service members in U.S. engineering degree programs. New findings identified in this study suggest that the context of an institution, including its size, location, and community makeup, impact institutional agents' abilities to support student veterans and service members. Future research is needed to develop alternative approaches for supporting student veterans and service members in engineering across varying institutional contexts.
Despite growing numbers of Latinas in higher education, they continue to go underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). As minoritized women in STEM, Latinas experience STEM contexts in a unique way, partly through the culture they bring to the higher-education experience. In this study, a Latine resilience model is utilized to understand how different contexts interact with Latine culture at a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) through an asset-based approach. To explore asset-based resilience, 28 Latina undergraduate students approaching graduation were interviewed about their culture, background, family, community, and other social support during their pursuit and completion of a college degree in the STEM fields in an HSI. In the findings, we describe dominant themes or resilience strategies that particularly fell into the home and college contexts of the resilience model. Family encouragement and motivation (particularly from parents), perseverance and self-efficacy, supportive student networks and communities, and some institutional/departmental support via faculty/staff were noted as sources that fed students' resilience and thus persistence in STEM. Findings suggest that cultural assets and contextual/institutional support can inform policy on how Latina undergraduates succeed in attaining STEM degrees.
The purpose of this work is to explore the experiences of women of color (WOC) who are thriving as they navigate engineering. To address our purpose, we use two theoretical perspectives (i.e., student navigation and engineering thriving) to analyze interview data from five undergraduate engineering students at one institution. Using deductive coding and thematic analysis, we found certain environmental features to be more salient for WOC in their development of thriving competencies. Student support centers, peer support, campus organizations, and internships provided WOC with support and/or opportunities to thrive in undergraduate engineering. Our findings highlight that ensuring accessibility of support and opportunities can promote the thriving of undergraduate WOC in engineering.
Existing research focuses on Latinx students' experiences, STEM identity, and educational pathways, including engineering. However, extensive research is lacking regarding Latinx students' motivation to pursue doctoral education in engineering that helps us understand how to enhance and support their engineering journeys. The purpose of this research is to understand Latinx students' motivation, including the subjective task values and sociocultural factors influencing their decision to obtain an engineering doctoral degree. This study addressed the research question: How do Latinx students' value beliefs, as described in the situated expectancy-value theory, influence their pursuit of a doctoral degree in engineering? Using Eccles' situated expectancy-value theory, we conducted a case study to investigate how participants' individual situations and cultural backgrounds shaped their expectancy and task values, which influenced their personal choices and aspirations. We analyzed 12 semi-structured interviews with Latinx engineering doctoral students. This study revealed that Latinx engineering doctoral students' motivation is a combination of one or more subjective task values, with attainment and utility values as most predominant. We also found that role models and research engagement influence subjective task values and strengthen desires to earn a doctoral degree. Importantly, Latinx sociocultural values such as collectivism and familism influenced participants' motivation to pursue a PhD. Based on these findings, we suggest faculty and administrators provide early intervention and support to strengthen Latinx student motivation to pursue, persist within, and complete doctoral engineering programs.
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.
Growing literature on the experiences of Black students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) at Historically Black Colleges or Universities (HBCUs) has illustrated HBCUs' success in graduating Black students in STEM. However, little research has examined the intersection of race and gender and psychological factors that may influence students' commitment to obtaining a STEM degree and/or career. The purpose of the present study was to identify whether gender moderates the impact of Africultural coping strategies (cognitive emotional debriefing and spiritual-centered) and psychological distress on commitment to persist in STEM among Black STEM students at-tending HBCUs. Using the intersectionality theoretical framework, we administered an online survey via Qualtrics to collect data on the coping strategies, distress, and STEM commitment from 463 Black women and 139 Black men STEM students across several HBCUs. The results indicated that gender was not a significant moderator: there were no significant interactions when predicting short-term commitment (while controlling for college-level courses), long-term commitment, nor career commit-ment to STEM. However, there was a significant main effect of spiritual-centered coping in predicting greater long-term intentions to commit to STEM. There was also a significant main effect of gender on career commitment, with Black men having greater intentions to commit to a STEM career rela-tive to Black women. This research will contribute to the limited research on gender differences in the retention of Black STEM students at HBCUs, using measures of Africultural coping strategies and psychological distress.
Women faculty are underrepresented in STEM fields at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs), particularly at higher academic ranks. Women with historically marginalized identities are further underrepresented. One noted barrier is isolation, which can be accentuated at PUIs with small departments and/or remote locations. To reduce isolation and promote networking, we created interinstitutional virtual "Affinity groups" for women faculty and underrepresented faculty in STEM in the 30-institution consortium The Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC). We followed the experiences of participants over a three-year period to determine how such networks could contribute to career advancement. In addition, we examined models of construction and identified factors that contributed to group success. Most participants reported that the groups alleviated aspects of isolation, provided advice for career and life challenges, and generated tangible results for career advancement. Groups have continued in a modified format without oversight from the project's leaders, indicating sustainability. Results demonstrate that inter-institutional networking was useful in supporting the success of underrepresented faculty in STEM at these PUIs and suggest that inter-institutional networks could contribute positively to the careers of underrepresented faculty at other institutions.
This multiple-methods study examines undergraduate engineering students' knowledge of and attitudes toward affirmative action (AA) admissions policies in higher education, which were prohibited in 2023 by the US Supreme Court. Prior research identified factors shaping AA attitudes-demographics, personal variables, institutional context, perceptions, and beliefs/values-but overlooked their interplay in engineering contexts. Building on previous work, this study integrates these factors with belief systems and racial theories to develop a conceptual framework and survey instrument. Quantitative analysis using hierarchical ordinary least-squares regression found beliefs/values to be the strongest predictors of AA attitudes, outweighing demographics. Qualitative data underscored the salience of students' personal beliefs/values. Both quantitative and qualitative results demonstrate that students have misconceptions about AA.
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 counters pace 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.
The military training of United States veterans emphasizes core beliefs and values that are highly valued within the engineering profession. Our study explores attitudes of social responsibility, defined as the desire to help others and benefit society, among engineering undergraduate student veterans. We used a validated instrument to measure social responsibility attitudes in engineering undergraduate students to answer the research question: How do attitudinal measures of social responsibility among undergraduate student veterans and non-veterans in engineering compare? We used data generated from focus group interviews with student veterans in engineering to answer the research question: How do undergraduate student veterans in engineering describe connections, if any, between social responsibility in the military and engineering professional contexts? Findings show how student veterans connect military-instilled values to engineering practice through tenets of social responsibility. These connections comprise yet another strength or unique attribute U.S. military veterans bring to engineering.
