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Journal of Engineering Education
Volume 109, Issue 3 p. 581-615
RESEARCH REVIEW
Open Access
RESEARCH LITERATURE ON WOMEN OF COLOR IN UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERING EDUCATION: A
SYSTEMATIC THEMATIC SYNTHESIS
Maria Ong,
Corresponding Author
Maria Ong
* maria_ong@terc.edu
* orcid.org/0000-0003-4111-8243
TERC, Cambridge, MA, USA
Correspondence
Maria Ong, TERC, 2067 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02140.
Email: maria_ong@terc.edu
Search for more papers by this author
Nuria Jaumot-Pascual,
Nuria Jaumot-Pascual
* orcid.org/0000-0002-0769-4098
TERC, Cambridge, MA, USA
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Lily T. Ko,
Lily T. Ko
* orcid.org/0000-0002-2443-2866
TERC, Cambridge, MA, USA
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Maria Ong,
Corresponding Author
Maria Ong
* maria_ong@terc.edu
* orcid.org/0000-0003-4111-8243
TERC, Cambridge, MA, USA
Correspondence
Maria Ong, TERC, 2067 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02140.
Email: maria_ong@terc.edu
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Nuria Jaumot-Pascual,
Nuria Jaumot-Pascual
* orcid.org/0000-0002-0769-4098
TERC, Cambridge, MA, USA
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Lily T. Ko,
Lily T. Ko
* orcid.org/0000-0002-2443-2866
TERC, Cambridge, MA, USA
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First published: 03 July 2020
https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20345
Citations: 13
Funding information: National Science Foundation, Grant/Award Number:
EEC-1427129; National Science Foundation, Grant/Award Number: HRD-1760845
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* Abstract
* 1 INTRODUCTION
* 2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
* 3 METHODS
* 4 LIMITATIONS
* 5 FINDINGS
* 6 DISCUSSION
* 7 RECOMMENDATIONS TO INSTITUTIONS, DEPARTMENTS, FACULTY, AND STAFF
* 8 CONCLUSION AND RESEARCH RECOMMENDATIONS
* ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
* Appendix: Notable works on women of color in engineering published April
2015–October 2019 A
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ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND
To address social disparities and generate an innovative workforce, engineering
higher education should provide learning environments that benefit students from
all backgrounds. However, because engineering programs are not enrolling or
retaining women of color at demographic parity, a better understanding of these
students' experiences is needed to develop effective interventions.
PURPOSE
This study analyzes research on women of color in undergraduate engineering
education to determine what influences their experiences, participation, and
advancement. We identify challenges to and strategies for persistence and
present recommendations for engineering institutions to create interventions
that support women of color and mitigate institutional inequities.
SCOPE/METHOD
Using the snowballing method, we identified 65 empirical studies published
between 1999 and 2015 that met the criteria for this review. These studies
represented qualitative, mixed-methods, and quantitative methodologies from
various fields. We conducted a systematic thematic synthesis, informed by frames
of intersectionality, critical race theory, and community cultural wealth.
CONCLUSIONS
Women of color use navigational strategies to address the social pain of race
and gender inequity in engineering education. Institutions should take
responsibility for generating a sense of belonging for women of color and
provide social and structural supports that increase self-efficacy, address
social pain, and improve retention.
1 INTRODUCTION
The need to improve avenues for women of color (WOC) to succeed in engineering
in the United States has been well established. As national demographics shift,
educational institutions have both the obligation and the motivation to develop
learning environments that benefit students of all backgrounds, including those
from marginalized groups, in the service of correcting social disparities and
generating a diverse and innovative workforce. Yet, engineering education
programs have not been successful in enrolling and retaining WOC—women
identifying as Asian or Asian American, Black or African American, Hispanic or
Latina/Latinx, Native American (American Indian or Alaska Native), Native
Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, or mixed race/ethnicity, by these or other
appellations (Ong, Wright, Espinosa, & Orfield, 2011)—at levels at least at
demographic parity. In 2017, WOC (ages 18–24) represented approximately 20.6% of
the U.S. population (National Science Foundation, National Center for Science
and Engineering Statistics, 2019). However, according to the most recent data
reported by the National Science Foundation (from 2016), only 7.6% of
engineering undergraduate degrees were awarded to WOC compared to 12.7% awarded
to White women and 79.1% awarded to men of any race/ethnicity (NSF/NCSES, 2019).
With more diversity in engineering, including WOC, the United States could avert
an impending engineering talent shortage (National Academy of Sciences, National
Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine, 2011) and improve creative
and competitive problem solving (Varassi, 2012; Wulf, 2002). Working now to help
undergraduate WOC succeed in engineering programs removes barriers to success
for diverse populations (Lord et al., 2009), generates engineering role models
for today's increasingly diverse youth (Hess, Gault, & Yi, 2013), and supports
the future diversity of the field (Hess et al., 2013; Kachchaf, Ko, Hodari, &
Ong, 2015; Nelson & Brammer, 2010; Nelson & Rogers, 2003). To achieve levels of
participation that reflect U.S. demographics and to benefit from the engineering
innovation that can be generated by diversity (Frehill, DiFabio & Hill, 2008),
we must better understand the lived experiences of WOC in undergraduate
engineering programs and develop solutions grounded in known factors that help
or hinder their success.
This article describes a subset of findings from a multiyear project examining
the factors that affect the experiences, participation, and advancement of women
of color in engineering (WOCE) higher education and careers. In the project, we
examined and synthesized quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods empirical
studies published between January 1999 and March 2015 when the project closed
its literature searches. The project spanned multiple disciplines (e.g.,
education, psychology, sociology, and science studies); adopted an
intersectional lens; and utilized snowballing, a systematic, rigorous data
collection method (Jaumot-Pascual, Ko, Ong, & Hodari, 2016). For the purposes of
this article and due to the limited findings of literature on graduate students,
faculty, and other professionals, we focused on results about WOCE in their
undergraduate education. We conducted a systematic thematic synthesis (Booth et
al., 2016; Thomas & Harden, 2008), which compiles a comprehensive set of
research on a phenomenon and uses thematic analysis to identify key themes
across the research that expand theoretical understanding of the literature as a
whole. Similar to Martin and colleagues' approach, our analysis allowed for
inclusion of a variety of types of studies and the identification of “productive
directions for future research and practice” (Martin et al., 2018, p. 3).
We adopted the intertwining theoretical frameworks of critical race theory (CRT;
Bell, 1995; Delgado & Stefancic, 2012) and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991,
1993) to examine the complexities experienced at the intersection of gender and
race/ethnicity that may contribute to WOC's underrepresentation in engineering
higher education, which, as part of the U.S. education system, historically
advantages White males (Thelin, 2011). We intentionally brought social justice
and intersectional lenses to this analysis, with an awareness that solving the
nation's engineering knowledge and labor gaps is the responsibility of
institutions, not of marginalized groups. This study follows the work of other
researchers who have advocated for an asset-based view of marginalized students
(Martin et al., 2018; Samuelson & Litzler, 2016; Yosso, 2005) over deficit
models that seek to “fix” students rather than to fix systems and institutions
(Valencia, 2010). Yosso's (2005) community cultural wealth (CCW) theory in
particular provides helpful theoretical background for understanding asset-based
factors in student life.
Few other literature syntheses have addressed engineering education from within
an intersectional framework, with two notable exceptions. One, a synthesis of
empirical literature on WOC in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
(STEM) education programs and careers led by Ong et al. (2011), discredited the
notion that WOC were not interested in or academically capable of succeeding in
STEM education and careers. It offered alternative explanations for attrition
and persistence that included types of learning environments, self-efficacy,
funding, and supportive networks. While this synthesis included engineering, it
did not disaggregate or report findings by discipline, and, as a result, focused
on STEM higher education in general. The other is a white paper by Fletcher et
al. (2017), commissioned by the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) and
other organizations, which summarized literature specifically about African
American women students and professionals in engineering and science fields and
detailed the challenges they face, such as tokenism, isolation, extra scrutiny
by peers, and pay inequities. This paper emphasized African American women's
intersectionality, or embodiment of two pervasive prejudices, sexism and racism,
in the United States and particularly in STEM. Similar to the synthesis by Ong
et al. (2011), however, the literature summary of this white paper did not focus
solely on engineering.
Thus, our study is unique in its focus specifically on WOCE in their
undergraduate education. It synthesizes a 15-year period of empirical research
on their experiences, persistence factors, interventions, challenges, and
outcomes in engineering programs and presents recommendations for institutions,
faculty, and researchers, constituting an original contribution to the
literature on solutions for advancing WOCE.
2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
This study utilized the interrelated theoretical frames of CRT,
intersectionality, and CCW. Developed from the discipline of legal studies, CRT
is a theory that examines phenomena in U.S. society and culture by applying
critical analysis of race, law, and power to expose how racism exists at an
institutional level (such as in educational institutions) to privilege members
of the dominant White culture to the exclusion of people of color (Bell, 1995;
Solórzano, 1997; Solórzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000). Intersectionality theory
acknowledges that multiple oppressions—such as racism, sexism, homophobia, or
ableism—intersect in the lived experiences of people of color. Here, we applied
the views of Crenshaw (1991; see also Crenshaw, 1993, 2015), who advanced the
understanding of intersectionality for WOC by critiquing feminist and antiracist
practices that “expound identity as woman or person of color as an either/or
proposition” (p. 1242). Crenshaw, as well as others (Collins, 2000; Collins &
Bilge, 2016; Delgado & Stefancic, 2012), has called for the recognition of
interlocking gendered and raced oppressions (among other oppressions) and for
clear articulation of how social inequalities are compounded for those who
embody multiple marginalized identities. In the context of engineering
education, ignoring intersectionality can lead to a lack of understanding or
overgeneralization about the experiences of WOC (Pawley, 2013, 2019). As
Leonard, Atwaters, Leggon, Pearson, and Gaines (2013) explain,
> Many studies tend to frame the issues of underrepresentation in engineering in
> terms of race/ethnicity OR gender. Few studies focus on underrepresented
> racial/ethnic minority students, fewer disaggregate by race and ethnicity …
> and fewer still disaggregate race/ethnicity by gender. … The results of the
> confluence of race, ethnicity and gender are greater than the sum of the
> statuses. Gender is inextricably intertwined with race and ethnicity:
> race/ethnicity impacts how one experiences being male or female, and gender
> impacts how one experiences belonging to a particular race and/or ethnic
> group. (p. 86).
Furthermore, scholars and practitioners in STEM education (Leyva, Massa, &
Battey, 2016) increasingly recognize that intervention strategies that address
one aspect of cultural identity, such as support programs targeted to either
people of color or women, have limited effectiveness for students who embody
multiple marginalities. Some researchers (Foor, Walden, & Trytten, 2007) have
suggested that intersectionality is a more productive approach for promoting
theoretical advances and practical solutions.
The CCW framework (Villalpando & Solórzano, 2005; Yosso, 2005, 2006; Yosso,
Smith, Ceja, & Solórzano, 2009), which grew out of CRT, acknowledges the
cultural wealth that stems from the lived experiences of marginalized students.
Employing an asset-based perspective rather than a deficit model, this framework
encompasses six forms of capital that students bring with them into educational
spaces. Aspirational capital refers to abilities to “maintain hopes and dreams
for the future, even in the face of real and perceived barriers” (Yosso, 2005,
p. 77). Linguistic capital reflects the “intellectual and social skills attained
through communication experiences” in their homes that enable students of color
to engage at school in multiple languages and use a wide range of communication
skills (p. 77). Familial capital refers to support from family members who share
“those cultural knowledges … that carry a sense of community history, memory,
and cultural intuition” (p. 79). Yosso conceptualized a broad meaning of
“family” to include extended kin and friends, stating that such ties minimize
isolation and provide connections to community and resources. Social capital
reflects “networks of people and community resources,” including peers and
others who provide emotional support (p. 80). Navigational capital refers to
skills and resources to “maneuver through structures of inequality permeated by
racism” such as predominantly White educational institutions (p. 80). Finally,
resistant capital refers to “knowledges and skills fostered through oppositional
behavior” that often lead to behaviors and attitudes that “challenge the status
quo” (p. 81; see also Solórzano & Villalpando, 1998). The CCW framework
counterposes the types of cultural capital (e.g., financial, social ties, class,
and education qualifiers) that are traditionally valued in White,
dominant-culture institutions and broadens the definition of which cultural
assets should be valued and recognized in education settings.
While there is a growing number of research studies that use the CCW framework
to explore entry and persistence in higher education (Brooms & Davis, 2017;
Holland, 2017; Huber, 2009; Pérez, 2017), very few focus on STEM (Denton,
Borrego, & Boklage, 2020) or engineering. One notable exception is by Samuelson
and Litzler (2016), who conducted secondary analysis on interviews with 31
African American and Latino/a undergraduates in engineering education. In
addition to finding that cultural wealth took different forms—for example,
navigating engineering programs, being motivated by social justice—the
researchers noted that students referenced more than one type of capital,
suggesting that the varieties of capital were dynamic in how they interacted
with one another. Samuelson and Litzler (2016) disaggregated their data by
gender, so they were able to capture some data specific to WOCE, but the
researchers called for more research to be conducted on this demographic.
The interconnected frameworks of CRT, intersectionality, and CCW are useful for
understanding phenomena experienced by WOCE as well as their asset-based
strategies for persistence in their undergraduate education. We have selected
these frameworks to reflect our commitment to use this study to address the
social barriers that WOCE face in their undergraduate programs and to locate the
responsibility for improving their outcomes within institutions of higher
education, not within marginalized communities.
3 METHODS
Based on Booth et al.'s (2016) classification of synthesis methods, our study is
consistent with a systematic thematic synthesis, which (a) seeks to integrate
and interpret a comprehensive set of research on a phenomenon, independently of
its epistemology or methodology, allowing for the integration of qualitative,
quantitative, and mixed methods studies; (b) uses the elements of thematic
analysis to approach the data; and (c) has the goal of generating “new
interpretive constructs, explanations or hypotheses” (Thomas & Harden, 2008, p.
1). In our synthesis, we implemented the interpretive construct of social pain
(Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2005) as an umbrella term for phenomena caused by
social exclusion and rejection that are separately present in the engineering
education literature, such as sexual harassment or isolation. Our synthesis also
aims to identify implications for practice and policy as well as opportunities
for further research around the factors that influence WOC's persistence in
engineering education (Borrego, Foster, & Froyd, 2014).
We followed Thomas and Harden's (2008) methods for conducting thematic syntheses
and adapted elements from Lauer et al. (2005), such as the steps in a research
synthesis. We also followed Borrego, Foster, and Froyd's (2015) (see also Martin
et al., 2018) recommendations for conducting systematic reviews, including
having a uniform set of criteria, having an interdisciplinary team, and making
our methods explicit. For the crucial stage of literature search and selection,
we chose the snowballing method, based on Wohlin's (2014) work, for its
efficiency, comprehensiveness, and systematic nature.
Snowballing requires first identifying and then searching using combinations of
search terms to generate an initial set of literature (the start set) that meets
the study's criteria and can be synthesized. Forward and backward snowballing is
then conducted on the works in the start set. Backward snowballing reviews the
bibliography of each study in the start set and assesses the literature
referenced there for additions to the synthesis. Forward snowballing identifies
any literature that has cited the pieces in the start set and assesses those for
inclusion as well. Each study added from forward or backward snowballing expands
the body of literature for synthesis.
With past syntheses, our team had encountered a number of challenges and
inefficiencies in the search and selection processes. With this in mind, we
modified our strategy (detailed below) for this study by increasing the number
of search terms to cast a broader net; selecting and testing several search
engines before choosing one to capture a high-quality start set; and relying on
the snowballing method to develop the final literature set. These changes
reduced our number of returned empty searches and duplicate results, eliminated
the need for inefficient literature solicitation, and allowed us to capture a
comprehensive literature set, while effectively and efficiently investing our
time and resources.
3.1 STAGE 1: PRE-SEARCH ACTIVITIES
Wohlin (2014) does not lay out a method for establishing an optimal start set on
which to conduct the snowballing process. We, therefore, formulated our own
pre-search steps to improve efficiency of our searches and ensure that the
results met our standards of relevance and quality. Pre-search activities
included establishing search, selection, and quality appraisal filtering
criteria; selecting a search engine; generating a list of more than 1,000 search
terms; and building search strings that would return the most relevant results
from our chosen search engine, Google Scholar (GS).
3.1.1 ESTABLISHING THE SEARCH, SELECTION, AND QUALITY APPRAISAL FILTERING
CRITERIA
We defined three sets of criteria: one to guide the literature search, one to
guide literature selection, and one to appraise the quality of the studies. The
search criteria were chosen to ensure that literature returned by our searches
adhered to the study's time frame (publication from January 1999 to March 2015
when our literature searches stopped) and three content areas of interest
(engineering, gender, and race/ethnicity, grouped as intersectionality). The
selection criteria guided which pieces returned by the searches qualified for
inclusion in the synthesis, for example, those which reported on national data,
had been published, or served as “gray literature.” Gray literature is
literature that is unpublished or is published in noncommercial form, including
conference proceedings and dissertations. These types of literature, which are
usually excluded from systematic reviews, can be of high quality and reflect
up-to-date research on certain topics (Mahood, Van Eerd, & Irvin, 2014). Indeed,
we found that 42.0% of our collection comprised gray literature that had been
released between January 2009 and March 2015. We applied the quality appraisal
filtering criteria seen in Table 1 to ensure that all studies, including the
gray literature, met our standard for empirical research. These criteria were
used to filter the literature found in the establishment of the start set and in
the snowballing process.
TABLE 1. Search, selection, and quality appraisal filtering criteria applied to
literature for inclusion in the synthesis
Type Category Definition Search and selection Intersectionality (race/ethnicity
and gender) Report findings addressing intersectionality of women of color;
provide findings specific for this population and/or disaggregate data by both
race/ethnicity and gender Search and selection Engineering Report findings
specifically on engineering, not STEM as a whole nor a combination of fields
that included engineering Search and selection Publication date Published or
made accessible to the public between January 1999 and March 2015aa March 2015
was the project's end date for literature searches. Coding of the literature
commenced after March 2015.
Selection Higher education and/or professionals Report findings on students in
higher education (undergraduate and graduate students; excluding K-12 education)
and professionals (including faculty) Selection National data Report on national
United States students, employees, schools, institutions of higher education,
and employment systemsbb If this information was not available and nothing else
(such as the author's institutional affiliation) suggested the report involved
foreign nationals, we assumed that study participants were from the United
States.
Selection Types of documents Published (journal articles or books) or gray
literature (conference proceedings or papers, dissertations, or reports); or
sections within larger works (e.g., book chapters) Quality appraisal Empirical
research Report empirical research, defined as presenting a research question,
research design, data collection (including from pre-existing data) and analysis
methods (including secondary analysis), findings, and answers to the research
questioncc Following the recommendation of several authors (Borrego, Foster, &
Froyd, 2014, 2015; Heyvaert et al., 2017; Walsh & Downe, 2006), our team
appraised the quality of studies to ensure they fulfilled this definition.
Studies that did not minimally fulfill these criteria were not included in the
synthesis.
* a March 2015 was the project's end date for literature searches. Coding of
the literature commenced after March 2015.
* b If this information was not available and nothing else (such as the
author's institutional affiliation) suggested the report involved foreign
nationals, we assumed that study participants were from the United States.
* c Following the recommendation of several authors (Borrego, Foster, & Froyd,
2014, 2015; Heyvaert et al., 2017; Walsh & Downe, 2006), our team appraised
the quality of studies to ensure they fulfilled this definition. Studies that
did not minimally fulfill these criteria were not included in the synthesis.
3.1.2 CREATING A LIST OF SEARCH TERMS
We identified three essential categories of search terms, engineering, gender,
and race/ethnicity, directly related to our research question, “What are the
factors that keep women of color in engineering disciplines?” We employed
several strategies to make the list of terms both thorough and precise, for
example, selecting only those terms that were most pertinent to those categories
(i.e., engineering, not engineering and computer science or other STEM
disciplines); using both commonly and less commonly used terms (e.g.,
underrepresented and nondominant); and using both current and obsolete terms
(e.g., Black, African American, Afro American, and Negro). Guided by the three
essential categories, we compiled an exhaustive list of more than 1,000 terms,
with the majority of the words affiliated with race/ethnicity terms,
specifically countries and tribes. These terms were then used to create search
strings. Here are some sample terms we chose for each category and for the
intersection of gender and race/ethnicity:
Engineering: engineer, engineering.
Gender: women, female, gender.
Race/ethnicity: race, ethnicity, Hispanic, Spanish, Latina, Chicana.
Intersection of gender and race/ethnicity: women of color, minority women.
3.1.3 SELECTING THE SEARCH ENGINE
As discussed previously, we went into the search process with an intention to
gather a comprehensive literature set while being time-efficient and limiting
redundancies and empty searches. We compared GS, the engine recommended by
Wohlin (2014), to many other engines and directories, including Engineering
Village, ERIC, and open source dissertation directories such as oatd.org. We ran
test searches on all the engines and directories and found that GS returned more
results and more citations, the fewest duplicate results and empty searches, and
the broadest range of literature types. We also found that the search strings we
were able to construct using GS's Boolean rules allowed us to be efficient with
our search terms and search strings. Therefore, we conducted all searches using
only GS.
3.1.4 BUILDING SEARCH STRINGS
Using GS's Boolean rules, we built search strings of all possible combinations
of our search terms. Each string included terms from each of our three essential
categories: engineering, gender, and race/ethnicity. Examples of simple search
strings can be seen below:
> (engineer | engineering) (woman | women | gender | female | females) (Hispanic
> | Spanish | Latina | Chicana | Mexican)
>
> (engineer | engineering) (woman | women | gender | female | females) (Black |
> African | Afro)
>
> (engineer | engineering) (woman | women | gender | female | females) (Asia |
> Asian | Pacific)
The use of Boolean rules in the construction of the search strings ensured that
at least one term inside each set of parentheses appeared in the titles of all
the resulting literature. The rules allowed us to pull a comprehensive
literature set while keeping our search terms relatively simple. For example,
including “engineering” in the string returned titles from across engineering
fields, such as civil, mechanical, computer, and environmental. We built a total
of 131 search strings.
3.2 STAGE 2: ESTABLISHING THE START SET
Entering the search strings into GS's engine and limiting results to publication
dates of 1999 to 2015 yielded an initial 298 results. To determine which of
those studies would qualify to be part of the start set, we sifted those results
through two filters. With Filter 1, we applied our search and selection criteria
(Table 1) to the readily available information such as abstracts and titles.
With this filter, we eliminated 209 pieces of literature (approximately 70% of
the results) because the titles and/or abstracts clearly showed that the studies
did not consider at least one of our three essential categories (race/ethnicity,
gender, or engineering), which automatically disqualified them for inclusion in
the synthesis. We also found a few studies that were not conducted in a U.S.
context and, thus, did not qualify. Filter 2 was a quality control filter that
ensured each piece met all the criteria, with an emphasis on intersectionality
and on our quality appraisal filtering criteria to ensure that studies met our
definition of empirical research. Of the studies remaining for this second
filter, 54 pieces (approximately 60%) did not qualify for inclusion. Most of
these studies were excluded due to lack of intersectionality; for example, they
reported findings such as graduation rates for students of color in engineering
OR for women in engineering, but they did not report on these rates for WOCE. We
also found a few pieces that did not pass the quality control filter because
they did not include sufficient information about their research methodology,
such as statements of how they analyzed their data or their research questions
or purpose. Lastly, we solicited further resources from our advisory board and
professional networks to double-check that our searches had not omitted any
significant works. This solicitation resulted in nine new resources, of which we
kept one. Filtering the results from the search and from the solicitation
resulted in 35 studies qualified to act as our start set. See Figure 1 for a
flowchart of our literature search, collection, and filtering steps.
FIGURE 1
Open in figure viewerPowerPoint
Flowchart of the literature search, selection, and filtering process followed to
find and select the literature included in the synthesis including the number of
pieces of literature resulting from each step
Throughout the process, we cataloged citations, abstracts, and full text
documents, and we tracked inclusion/exclusion decisions. Following Borrego et
al. (2015), our team put in place a process to resolve any filtering questions
that arose by consensus.
3.3 STAGE 3: SNOWBALLING
We used the iterative process of forward and backward snowballing to expand the
literature set with additional works. We began with forward snowballing, which
consisted of identifying the works that cited our start set. We utilized GS's
“cited by” feature in its search results page and found 804 “cited by”
references. We applied Filters 1 and 2 to this literature as seen earlier. In
Filter 1, we eliminated 756 pieces (approximately 94%) of the studies because
they did not include at least one of our three essential categories or because
they were not U.S.-based studies. In Filter 2, we eliminated an additional 32
works (just over 66%) of the remaining results because they did not report on
intersectionality or because they did not pass the quality control for empirical
research. This resulted in 16 new pieces for the set.
We then applied backward snowballing to the start set, compiling and reviewing
all the literature that the start set pieces cited in their bibliographies, and
found 1,867 references. We eliminated the literature published before 1999 (our
cutoff year), which removed 469 works (approximately 25% of the literature), for
a total of 1,398. Implementing Filter 1 eliminated an additional 1,347 pieces
(just over 96%) not relevant to this synthesis because of their lack of
inclusion of at least one of our three essential categories or lack of U.S.
focus, and Filter 2 eliminated 37 more pieces (approximately 72%) of the
remaining references because they did not report on intersectional findings. Our
backward snowballing process yielded 14 additional pieces.
The resulting body of literature that qualified for the synthesis was 65 studies
(35 from the start set plus 30 from snowballing). See Table 2 for brief
descriptors of the studies included in the synthesis (for a full list, see the
Reference section).
TABLE 2. Brief descriptors of empirical research on WOC in engineering higher
education and careers, 1999 to 2015, included in the synthesisaa Readers should
note that when we use gender and race/ethnicity descriptors in this table and
throughout this text, we adhere as much as possible to the terms (e.g.,
Latina/Latino) used by each author in the literature referenced even though we
recognize that language for race/ethnicity and gender identifiers is continually
evolving (e.g., Latinx).
Author/s and year Literature format Methodological stance STEM field Education
levelbb Education level refers to the attainment levels of the subjects at the
time of each study. Some pieces of literature contain contemporaneous data on
the experiences of undergraduate women of color in engineering (WOCE) while
others contain reflections on past undergraduate experiences by WOCE who went on
to other attainment levels.
Race/ethnicity and gender descriptors Alonso (2012) Conference proceedings or
papers Qualitative Engineering Undergraduate African American, Black, Hispanic,
and Latina women Alonso (2015) Dissertation Mixed methods Engineering
Undergraduate Latina/o women and men Atwaters and Tao (2015) Book chapter
Quantitative Engineering Undergraduate and graduate African American, Asian,
Black, Hispanic, and White women Berry, Farmer Cox, and Main (2014) Conference
proceedings or papers Quantitative Engineering Faculty African American women
Brown (2000) Dissertation Qualitative Science and Engineering Undergraduate
Hispanic women and men Brown (2008) Peer-reviewed journal article Qualitative
STEM Undergraduate Hispanic women and men Bush (2013) Dissertation Qualitative
Engineering Professionals Black women Camacho and Lord (2011) Conference
proceedings or papers Qualitative Engineering Undergraduate Asian, Latina, and
White women Chinn (1999) Peer-reviewed journal article Qualitative Engineering
Undergraduate and early career Polynesian and Filipina women Chinn (2002)
Peer-reviewed journal article Qualitative Engineering, Physics, and Chemistry
Undergraduate Chinese and Japanese women Chowdhury and Chowdhury (2007)
Conference proceedings or papers Quantitative Engineering Undergraduate African
American and Black women Cruz-Pol and Colom-Ustáriz (2002) Conference
proceedings or papers Quantitative Engineering Undergraduate Hispanic women
DeCuir-Gunby, Grant, and Gregory (2013) Peer-reviewed journal article
Qualitative Engineering Faculty African American and Hispanic/Latina women
DeCuir-Gunby, Long-Mitchell, and Grant (2009) Book chapter Qualitative
Engineering Faculty African American, Hispanic/Latina, and Latin women Eng and
Layne (2002) Conference proceedings or papers Quantitative Engineering
Professionals Asian/Pacific Islander and Asian American women and men Frehill
(2004) Conference proceedings or papers Quantitative Engineering Undergraduate
and graduate African American, Asian American, American Indian, Hispanic,
Mexican American and Puerto Rican, multi-racial, other Latino, and non-Hispanic
White women and men Frillman, Brawner, and Waters (2010) Conference proceedings
or papers Qualitative Engineering Undergraduate African American women Gorman
(2014) Dissertation Qualitative Engineering Undergraduate and staff members
African American, Hispanic, Native American, and White women and men Hackler
(2011) Dissertation Qualitative STEM Undergraduate Black and Hispanic women and
men Jackson-Smith (2015) Peer-reviewed journal article Qualitative STEM
Undergraduate African American women Lain and Smith (2012) Report Quantitative
Engineering Undergraduate African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, and
Latino women and men Leonard, Atwaters, Leggon, Pearson Jr, and Gaines (2013)
Conference proceedings or papers Quantitative Engineering Undergraduate and
recent graduates Black women and men Litzler, Mody-Pan, and Brainard (2011)
Conference proceedings or papers Quantitative Engineering Undergraduate African
American, Asian American, Hispanic American, Native American and White women
Litzler and Samuelson (2013a) Conference proceedings or papers Qualitative
Engineering Undergraduate African American/Black, American Indian, Asian/Asian
American, Asian Indian, Hispanic/Latino, White women and men Litzler and
Samuelson (2013b) Conference proceedings or papers Qualitative Engineering
Undergraduate African American, Latina/o, American Indian women and men Lord and
Camacho (2013) Conference proceedings or papers Mixed methods Engineering
Undergraduate Latina women Lord, Camacho, Layton, Long, Ohland, and Wasburn
(2009) Peer-reviewed journal article Quantitative Engineering Undergraduate
Asian, Black, Hispanic, Native American, and White women and men Lord, Camacho,
Layton, and Ohland (2010) Conference proceedings or papers Quantitative
Engineering Undergraduate Asian, Black, Hispanic, Native American, and White
women and men Lord, Layton, and Ohland (2011) Peer-reviewed journal article
Quantitative Engineering Undergraduate, including transfer students Asian,
Black, Hispanic, and White women and men Lord, Layton, and Ohland (2014a)
Conference proceedings or papers Quantitative Engineering Undergraduate Asian,
Black, Hispanic, and White women and men Lord, Layton, and Ohland (2014b)
Peer-reviewed journal article Quantitative Engineering Undergraduate, including
transfer students Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White women and men Lord, Layton,
Ohland, and Orr (2013) Conference proceedings or papers Quantitative Engineering
Undergraduate Asian, Black, Hispanic, Native American, and White women and men
Lucero (2003) Conference proceedings or papers Qualitative Science and
Engineering Faculty African American women Maldonado, Ramirez, Vazquez, and
Medina-Borja (2007) Conference proceedings or papers Qualitative Engineering
Undergraduate Puerto Rican women and men Marra, Rodgers, Shen, and Bogue (2009)
Peer-reviewed journal article Quantitative Engineering Undergraduate African
American, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, White, and other minority ethnicity
women Martin, Simmons, and Yu (2013) Peer-reviewed journal article Mixed methods
Engineering Undergraduate Hispanic women Mitchell (2014) Dissertation
Qualitative Engineering and STEM Undergraduate African American,
Asian/Caucasian, Caucasian, Hispanic, and Mixed Race women Montgomery (2009)
Dissertation Qualitative Engineering Undergraduate African American women and
men Morell (2002) Conference proceedings or papers Mixed methods Engineering
Undergraduate and graduate Latina women Nelson and Brammer (2010) Report
Quantitative STEM, Engineering, Economics, Political Science, Sociology, and
Psychology Faculty Asian, Black, Hispanic, Native American, and White women and
men Nelson and Rogers (2003) Report Quantitative Science and Engineering Faculty
Asian, Black, Hispanic, Native American, and White women and men Oden (2003)
Dissertation Qualitative Engineering Doctoral African American and White women
and men Ohland, Brawner, Camacho, Layton, Long, Lord, and Wasburn (2011)
Peer-reviewed journal article Quantitative Engineering Undergraduate Asian,
Black, Hispanic, Native American and White women and men Ohland, Lord, and
Layton (2015) Peer-reviewed journal article Quantitative Engineering
Undergraduate Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White women and men Ohland, Orr,
Layton, Lord, and Long (2012) Conference proceedings or papers Quantitative
Engineering Undergraduate Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White women and men
Ohland, Orr, Lundy-Wagner, Veenstra, and Long (2012) Book chapter Quantitative
Engineering Undergraduate and graduate, faculty, professionals Asian, Black,
Hispanic, Native American and White women and men Orr, Lord, Layton, and Ohland
(2014) Peer-reviewed journal article Quantitative Engineering Undergraduate
Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White women and men Parker (2013) Dissertation
Qualitative Engineering, Chemistry, Information Technology, Biology, Laboratory
Animal Science Undergraduate African American women Reyes (2011) Peer-reviewed
journal article Qualitative STEM Transfer students (UG) African, African
American, American Indian, and Chinese women Rice (2011) Dissertation
Qualitative Engineering Professionals African American/Black women Rice and
Alfred (2014) Peer-reviewed journal article Qualitative Engineering
Professionals African American/Black women Ro and Loya (2015) Peer-reviewed
journal article Quantitative Engineering Undergraduate Asian, Black, Latina/o,
Native American, and Caucasian/White women and men Shain (2002) Dissertation
Qualitative Engineering Undergraduate African American women Shehab et al.
(2007) Conference proceedings or papers Qualitative Engineering Undergraduate
African American, Asian American, Hispanic, and Native American women and men
Simon (2011) Conference proceedings or papers Qualitative Engineering
Professionals African American women Smith (2011) Dissertation Qualitative
Engineering Undergraduate African American, Asian, Caucasian, and Middle Eastern
women Somerville-Midgette (2014) Dissertation Qualitative Engineering
Professionals African American/Black women Sosnowski (2002) Dissertation
Qualitative Engineering and Information Technology Undergraduate and graduate
African American/Black, Latina, and White women and men Tate and Linn (2005)
Peer-reviewed journal article Qualitative Engineering Undergraduate African
American, Biracial (African American and White), Filipina, and Multiracial
(Mexican/Mayan ancestry, Vietnamese, and White) women Tharp (2002) Dissertation
Mixed methods Engineering Professionals African American, European American,
Hispanic, and Native American women Tran, Herrera, and Gasiewski (2011) Report
Qualitative STEM Graduate African American, Asian American, American Indian,
Latina/o, Multiracial, and White women and men Trenor, Yu, Sha, Zerda, and
Waight (2007) Conference proceedings or papers Quantitative Engineering
Undergraduate African American/Black, Asian, Hispanic, White, and Multiracial
women Trenor, Yu, Waight, and Zerda (2008) Conference proceedings or papers
Qualitative Engineering Undergraduate Multiracial and Mexican American women
Trenor, Yu, Waight, Zerda, and Sha (2008) Peer-reviewed journal article Mixed
methods Engineering Undergraduate African American/Black, Asian, Hispanic, and
White women Vazquez-Akim (2014) Dissertation Qualitative Engineering
Undergraduate and faculty African American/Black, American Indian/Alaska Native,
Asian, Multiracial, and White women and men
* a Readers should note that when we use gender and race/ethnicity descriptors
in this table and throughout this text, we adhere as much as possible to the
terms (e.g., Latina/Latino) used by each author in the literature referenced
even though we recognize that language for race/ethnicity and gender
identifiers is continually evolving (e.g., Latinx).
* b Education level refers to the attainment levels of the subjects at the time
of each study. Some pieces of literature contain contemporaneous data on the
experiences of undergraduate women of color in engineering (WOCE) while
others contain reflections on past undergraduate experiences by WOCE who went
on to other attainment levels.
3.4 CODING
The team created a codebook through a hybrid approach that used both deductive
and inductive coding (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006). This hybrid approach drew
from our knowledge of the field through the use of the a priori codes the team
had developed for previous work in STEM education (Ong et al., 2011; Ong, Smith,
& Ko, 2018). The coding framework was organized around two main “parent” codes
(person/support entity and action/type of support). These codes could be applied
in an overlapping manner so that coded sections often included a “child” code
from both categories. There were additional parent codes for
recommendations/advice that we used for the development of the recommendations
based on this synthesis and a “parking lot” for codes from the data to be
considered for inclusion in the overall coding framework (see below for an
example). See Table 3 for samples of codes included in the framework.
TABLE 3. Coding framework used to code analytic memos (abbreviated)aa The coding
framework used to code analytic memos included definitions and examples for each
of the codes listed in the table. It is not possible include the full codebook
due to its length.
Person/support entity Action/type of support (or lack thereof)
1. Advisor/Supervisor
2. Family
3. Peers/Social Group
4. Teacher/Professor
5. Mentors
6. Internship
7. Support Programs
8. Professional Organizations
9. Institution/Department
1. Identification/Self-expectations
2. Navigation
3. Social Comfort
1. Isolation
2. Prove-it-again
3. Recognition/Reputation
4. Spotlighting
5. Microaggressions
Recommendations Parking lot
1. For Institutions/Departments/Faculty
2. For women of color
3. For future researchers
1. Work/Life and School/Life Balance
2. Other
* a The coding framework used to code analytic memos included definitions and
examples for each of the codes listed in the table. It is not possible
include the full codebook due to its length.
Some of the codes encompassed concepts from the literature on our theoretical
frameworks. For example, both navigation (part of the action/type of support
parent code) and family support (part of the person/support entity parent code)
were codes that stemmed from Yosso's (2005) CCW theory.
We began applying the a priori codes to an initial sample of studies and
modified the codebook when the new data did not fit. For example, the social
comfort child code (part of the action/type of support parent code) was not part
of the original coding framework. It developed as a parking lot code through
several iterations of coding until it eventually became part of the overall
codebook. Thus, this codebook was a living document and was periodically updated
and refined by team consensus through an iterative process of coding, analysis,
and recoding (Creswell, 2009, 2013; Glaser & Strauss, 1967).
3.5 ANALYSIS
We applied thematic analysis to the codes to develop our key themes. We looked
for creative connections between the literature beyond the synthesis and the set
of studies included in the synthesis in a process similar to abductive analysis
described by Timmermans and Tavory (2012). For example, we found disparate
literature describing how WOCE experience difficulties and barriers, such as
racial discrimination and isolation, that stem from social interaction. Our team
grouped this variety of difficulties under the psychology term social pain
(Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2005) as an umbrella concept. This grouping provides
additional theoretical background that was absent from the existing literature
and allows for a deeper understanding of closely related phenomena based on the
experience of negative social interactions. In other cases, some codes, such as
support entities and navigation, were found so prominently across the literature
that they emerged as part of our final themes.
From such groupings and connections with the literature, we identified four
analytical themes: interest, motivation, and self-efficacy; social pain;
navigation; and support entities. Our analysis focused on (a) these analytical
themes, which elucidate the internal and external factors that support WOCE's
success in undergraduate engineering education; (b) the implications of the
findings for practice and policy; and (c) the topics that require additional
research. These three areas form the core of this synthesis.
4 LIMITATIONS
The limitations of this synthesis are primarily connected to our methodological
choices. First, we decided to include empirical research on WOCE published only
between January 1999 and March 2015. This decision was based on the belief that
older research may no longer be relevant to the contemporary experiences of WOCE
as well as the need to stop literature searches to advance to the next stage of
the project. For the benefit of the reader, we conducted a cursory,
nonexhaustive search of works on WOCE released between April 2015 and October
2019. The result was the 31 works listed in the Appendix.
Another limitation is the possibility that our definition of empirical research
eliminated qualified studies even though we were relatively lenient in defining
what constitutes the different components of a research study. Another
limitation may be that we chose to use a single search engine to conduct our
literature searches, and it may have not found all relevant works. However, it
was supplemented by our snowballing process and by soliciting additional
resources from our advisory board and professional networks, thereby casting a
wide net to ensure the inclusion of works not otherwise captured. Another
limitation is that the team did not disaggregate beyond race/ethnicity and
gender by various social identities (e.g., class, sexuality, and ability
status). However, given that most of the literature did not include
disaggregation by these categories, analysis beyond race/ethnicity and gender
would have been of limited relevance. Finally, in the set of studies we
synthesized, there was an imbalance in the representation of different
racial/ethnic groups due to the fact that the literature itself focused more on
some groups, such as African American women, than on others, such as Asian
American and Native American women.
5 FINDINGS
Our analysis of the 65 studies included in this synthesis resulted in four main
analytical themes: interest, motivation, and self-efficacy; social pain;
navigation; and support entities. Below we discuss how elements of each of these
four themes influence WOCE's experiences and persistence in their undergraduate
programs.
5.1 THEME I: INTEREST, MOTIVATION, AND SELF-EFFICACY
The literature showed that WOC were motivated to enter and persist in
engineering for myriad of reasons, most prominently strong pre-college interest
and academic preparation in STEM. Early interest in mathematics and science
provided strong foundations for academic progress toward engineering studies in
higher education (Bush, 2013; DeCuir-Gunby, Grant, & Gregory, 2013; Rice, 2011;
Somerville-Midgette, 2014). Good grades, good scores on standardized tests,
strengths in mathematics and science, and demonstrated capabilities relative to
their male counterparts were also motivators in selecting to study engineering
(Chowdhury & Chowdhury, 2007; Cruz-Pol & Colom-Ustáriz, 2002; Frillman, Brawner,
& Waters, 2010; Morell, 2002; Smith, 2011). Moreover, attendance at pre-college
engineering programs during high school influenced WOC's decisions to choose
engineering studies in college (Bush, 2013; Tate & Linn, 2005). Strong interest
in STEM, good grades, and high self-efficacy (discussed below) are common
reasons for many students to pursue engineering. What makes the experiences of
WOC unique in this regard is that they are persisting on engineering education
trajectories in spite of strong, pervasive cultural messages that WOC do not
belong in the field due to both their race/ethnicity and gender (Boucher,
Fuesting, Diekman, & Murphy, 2017; Cheryan, Ziegler, Montoya, & Jiang, 2017).
Enjoyment, prestige, and anticipated financial reward were also noted to be
motivations for entering and persisting in engineering education. Litzler and
Samuelson (2013a) found that “enjoyment of engineering” (p. 3) was a top
motivator for female (and male) Latina/o and Asian Indian students to persist in
engineering once they entered college. A few studies found that WOC
undergraduate students were motivated by perceptions that engineering was a
well-paid profession and drew on what Yosso (2005) calls aspirational capital
that, as engineers, they would provide a stable life for themselves and their
families (Hackler, 2011; Litzler & Samuelson, 2013a; Morell, 2002; Trenor, Yu,
Waight, & Zerda, 2008). For example, Morell (2002), reporting on a study of
Latina undergraduate engineering majors at the University of Puerto Rico,
Mayagüez campus, described participants as consciously thinking about
engineering as generating high incomes as well as prestige.
Several works in our synthesis showed that WOCE selected and succeeded in
engineering education because of their solid sense of self-efficacy, which is
belief in one's own ability to succeed or accomplish a task (Bandura, 1982).
Some studies found that high self-efficacy was a critical predictor of academic
success and resulted from prior math and science courses in which they had
excelled, as well as their acceptance into selective engineering programs (Bush,
2013; Lain & Smith, 2012; Maldonado, Ramirez, Vazquez, & Medina-Borja, 2007;
Shain, 2002; Smith, 2011). Confidence grounded in family support or religious
upbringing (Parker, 2013) also augmented their sense of self-efficacy and
engineering persistence, pointing toward familial capital (Yosso, 2005) as
further reinforcing self-efficacy. Furthermore, studies found that WOCE often
held strong beliefs and expectations that they would achieve their academic
goals and be professionally successful (Rice, 2011; Shain, 2002), and even
become leaders in engineering (Shain, 2002; Somerville-Midgette, 2014;
Sosnowski, 2002), suggesting aspirational capital (Yosso, 2005) as a driver of
success. Morell's (2002) study highlighted Latinas showing high self-efficacy by
entering a male-dominated career, stating, “they have taken particular pleasure
in selecting a field that is still dominated by men; the thought of succeeding
in that kind of environment is particularly appealing” (p. 12). For some WOCE,
quitting engineering education was simply not an option, and they worked hard to
prove to themselves and others that they could succeed (Litzler & Samuelson,
2013b; Rice & Alfred, 2014).
The literature also focused on the causes of low self-efficacy in WOCE,
including perceptions of low academic ability (Mitchell, 2014; Parker, 2013;
Vazquez-Akim, 2014); feelings of not belonging (Marra, Rodgers, Shen, & Bogue,
2009); and attendant behaviors that negatively affect engineering pathways—such
as an over-willingness to re-do coursework (Brown, 2008); questioning of their
choice to enter engineering (Mitchell, 2014); underestimating their own academic
abilities (Parker, 2013); and self-deterrence from persisting (Vazquez-Akim,
2014). Fortunately, the literature suggests that self-efficacy is not fixed and
that there are ways, many of them involving social interactions, to increase it
and thus WOC's persistence in engineering. These ways include identifying
mathematics and science strengths (Chowdhury & Chowdhury, 2007; Cruz-Pol &
Colom-Ustáriz, 2002; Marra et al., 2009; Smith, 2011); building engineering
skills through internships (Hackler, 2011); successfully competing against
strong students from other universities (Hackler, 2011); participating in
supportive relationships, including personal and professional support from
friends, peers, and mentors (Rice & Alfred, 2014; Shain, 2002); receiving
genuine interest from program coordinators (Jackson-Smith, 2015); being asked to
meet high expectations by mentors (Oden, 2003); and building networks in
engineering through internships or student organizations (Brown, 2008; Shain,
2002). Unfortunately, many of these suggestions take an approach of “fixing” the
student instead of seeking solutions from an institutional stance. In contrast,
Brown (2008) explained the positive effects that engaging with student
organizations focused on engineering had on the self-efficacy of Hispanic women
participants:
> By these young women being chosen and invited to be members of these groups,
> they were given confidence and purpose. They were given the message that they
> were a very important member of that school. … Those who were involved …
> blossomed in terms of being confident in many different situations. They found
> that they could do math and science and could be an important contributing
> member of the group. This was a valuable part of each one of these female
> student’s lives, and each mentioned that this group helped her to successfully
> major in science or engineering. (p. 220).
This example at the organizational level shows that self-efficacy is not
immutable and that institutional supports such as the ones cited above can have
a positive impact on it.
Maldonado et al.'s (2007) study demonstrates on a much larger scale the impact
of positive institutional supports on WOCE's self-efficacy. Maldonado and
colleagues found Latina students at a Puerto Rican university to be highly
confident of their acceptance into engineering due to teacher encouragement and
having well-known women role models in engineering. Their participants felt
capable and comfortable expressing their views in front of their male peers, and
the majority was willing to enter jobs dominated by men. In this case, teacher
support and role models, especially role models who are WOC, were pivotal
supports for these women's self-efficacy.
Clearly, self-efficacy is a key support for success in engineering, a finding
that resonates in the wider literature on WOC in STEM (Brownlee, 2004; Gwilliam
& Betz, 2001; Espinosa, 2008, 2011; Vogt, 2005). Self-efficacy impacts both the
intention to enter engineering studies and the ability to persist and succeed.
Not all WOCE have a high degree of self-efficacy, however, and the literature
demonstrates that self-efficacy can be modified and improved by institutional
action to improve outcomes for WOCE. In spite of these findings, WOC remain
underrepresented in engineering. As we will see in the next section, the
literature indicates that one of the major issues is social pain.
5.2 THEME II: SOCIAL PAIN
Across the literature, we found that WOCE experienced rejection from or lacked a
sense of belonging to the predominantly White and male engineering environment.
Their experiences were often rooted in intersectionality—their existing in
engineering spaces as both female and non-White—and resulted from informal
social dynamics and interactions with peers and faculty. We adapt the term
social pain (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2005) from the field of psychology to
describe this set of experiences. Psychologists Eisenberger and Lieberman posit
that when a human experiences social pain—including rejection, feeling left out,
or feeling like one does not belong—it triggers a neural reaction that may be
analogous to a reaction to physical pain. A physiological alarm goes off,
interrupts current tasks, and focuses attention on mitigating the pain source.
The reaction is “distressing, attention-getting and disruptive” (Eisenberger &
Lieberman, 2005, p. 117). Our team describes social pain as diverting WOCE's
cognitive resources away from the study and practice of engineering and toward
the managing of their social environment. The literature in our study identified
four types of social pain: being the only one; being made invisible; stereotype
threat and being spotlighted; and discrimination and harassment.
5.2.1 BEING THE ONLY ONE
The literature revealed that WOCE experienced a sense of isolation stemming from
being the only one of their gender and/or race/ethnicity in engineering
classrooms that were populated mostly by White men. The social pain of isolation
manifested as loneliness (Alonso, 2012; Parker, 2013); the inkling that they
were serving as racial, ethnic and/or gender tokens (Bush, 2013); the sense that
no one else in the department fully understood them (Bush, 2013; Frillman et
al., 2010; Parker, 2013); having few professors or other role models who looked
like them (Nelson & Brammer, 2010; Nelson & Rogers, 2003); and/or anxiety that
they were being excluded from important study groups and networks (Rice, 2011;
Tate & Linn, 2005).
In Sosnowski's (2002) study of undergraduate WOC in engineering and other
technology-related fields, one African American engineering major recounted her
sense of loneliness: “There is really no one you can talk to that's going to
relate with the things that you have to deal with on a day-to-day basis as [an]
African American female in engineering” (p. 137). Underscoring the effects of
social pain, Tate and Linn (2005) noted that WOCE in their study “find
difficulty in forming and participating in study groups because of their racial
or ethnic difference” and warned that their social identities could be
“characterized by feelings of difference and [a] lack [of] sense of belonging”
(p. 488). Being the only one effectively isolates WOC from the majority of the
engineering students and may result in their questioning their placement in
their program. For example, one participant in Mitchell's (2014) study reflected
on how her isolation might affect her persistence: “I was concerned there were
too few black engineers and I was not sure I would be able to successfully
complete an engineering program in college” (p. 78).
5.2.2 BEING IGNORED OR MADE INVISIBLE
Being ignored or made invisible yields particular kinds of social pain for WOCE.
Research on WOC students and professionals in engineering and other STEM fields
(Carlone & Johnson, 2007; Obiomon, Tickles, Wowo, & Holland-Hunt, 2007; Rincon &
Yates, 2018) has demonstrated that when meaningful others, such as professors or
peers, recognize a WOC as a competent, emergent STEM professional, it can build
her STEM identity. Conversely, withholding such recognition can exacerbate a
sense of not belonging. Several studies in our synthesis described how White
male professors and peers routinely exercised their power to ignore or make
invisible WOCE in classrooms or study groups (Alonso, 2012; Bush, 2013; Camacho
& Lord, 2011; Lord & Camacho, 2013; Reyes, 2011). An African American woman in
Bush's (2013) study described a commonly reported incident: “If you had
questions or anything and asked a question, the teacher would ignore it. But if
a White man asked the same question, they would say okay, that's great. And it
was just a lot of slights and how we were treated differently” (p. 85).
When clustered with White students, Asian American engineering students can also
experience the social pain of being made invisible and ignored. Ro and Loya
(2015) stated that when Asian American students are grouped with Whites in
engineering and science, any “low levels of self-efficacy and confidence” could
go unrecognized and contribute to academic struggles, as Asian American students
are “less likely to seek support, unknowingly limiting the resources and capital
that other students benefit from, and potentially undermining their ability or
at least the self-assessment of their skills” (p. 386).
When White male peers ignore the contributions of WOCE during classroom group
work and assign them, instead, to ancillary roles like note-taker, they
effectively demote the social status of the latter and negate their intellectual
potential. Camacho and Lord (2011), observing such a phenomenon among
undergraduate Latinas in their engineering courses, noted that such experiences
isolated them from their majority peers and made them invisible as contributing
group members; these Latinas then had to redirect their focus from the task at
hand to solving the social situation. One African American engineering student
in Parker's (2013) study described a similar experience of the social pain of
being made invisible:
> It's just very awkward to have to go into a room and be the only person of
> color. You know you don't have anybody. It was like that in the beginning but
> you don't have anybody to talk to. When we are assigned projects, we are split
> into teams and they weren't very receptive. It was almost as if they were
> talking over me, not like I was speaking and they were talking over me. I was
> sitting in the middle of two of my group mates and they were talking to each
> other over me. (p. 100).
5.2.3 STEREOTYPE THREAT AND BEING SPOTLIGHTED
Stereotype threat is a situational predicament in which a person feels at risk
of confirming a negative stereotype (e.g., unintelligent, bad at mathematics,
and not athletic) about a group of which that person is a member (Steele, 2010).
Stereotype threat causes stress and debilitates performance in ways that do not
affect members of nonstereotyped groups in the same context (Spencer, Steele, &
Quinn, 1999; Steele, 1997, 2010; Steele & Aronson, 1995).
Our study revealed that, like other minoritized groups, WOCE carried the burden
of disproving negative stereotypes about their group's intellectual abilities in
engineering. In Oden's (2003) comparative study of African American and White
doctoral students in an engineering department, one African American woman
reported, “At first, I didn't get the personal guidance that I needed. The only
feedback I received seemed too general. It seems like I had to prove my worth
intellectually before my advisor spent quality time with me” (p. 95). Several
studies noted WOCE's observations that, conversely, their White male colleagues
did not carry the same burden of proving themselves (Camacho & Lord, 2011; Oden,
2003; Parker, 2013; Rice & Alfred, 2014; Shain, 2002). Litzler, Mody-Pan, and
Brainard (2011) and Lord and Camacho (2013) suggest that the scarcity of WOCE in
higher education contributes to their vulnerability to stereotype threat and
reinforces existing stereotypes about who is capable and who belongs.
Being singled out on the basis of an aspect of one's social identity, otherwise
known as being spotlighted (Carter, 2007; Carter Andrews, 2012; McLoughlin,
2005), can exacerbate stereotype threat for WOC. This is especially so if
spotlighting is initiated by an authority figure, such as a professor calling on
a single African American woman to be the voice for all African Americans.
Litzler et al. (2011), who studied a large, racially/ethnically diverse group of
undergraduate women in engineering, found that survey data from students at 21
schools showed that African American women, in particular, experienced a
disproportionate amount of racial stereotyping and being singled out. The
researchers noted, “Stereotypes in and of themselves can make individuals from
the stereotyped group feel like they do not belong. Being singled out in class
because of one's racial or ethnic background creates an even more hostile
climate” (Litzler et al., 2011, p. 8; see also Parker, 2013).
5.2.4 DISCRIMINATION AND HARASSMENT
Lastly, several studies suggested that WOCE experienced social pain as a result
of discrimination and harassment by professors and peers. In interactions with
undergraduate peers and faculty in engineering, WOCE reported being sexually
harassed (Gorman, 2014); being the subject of subtle or overt racism or sexism
(Bush, 2013; Camacho & Lord, 2011; Reyes, 2011; Shehab et al., 2007), and having
their abilities and academic qualifications questioned (Brown, 2000; Camacho &
Lord, 2011). For example, Camacho and Lord (2011) described male undergraduate
peers undercutting Latinas' achievements by ascribing them to affirmative
action, irrespective of the fact that the Latinas' grades and standardized test
scores were consistently higher than their peers'. Sexual harassment and
discrimination were also evident in a few studies. For example, Gorman (2014)
described one WOC engineering student, Terri, who knew she was going to fail a
class because her male instructor gave her “straight 69 s” on all her homework
and tests. Gorman stated, “A score of 69, with sexual undertones and all, is not
considered a passing grade in engineering. A consistent score of 69 ‘on
everything’ that Terri received somehow felt wrong” (p. 222). This same student
recounted male peers in her program joking with female students about the
females getting A's only because they “have boobs” (p. 200).
The literature shows that social pain is widely experienced in many forms by WOC
in the engineering environment; that this pain can negatively impact their
performance, persistence and retention, regardless of their levels of interest,
motivation and self-efficacy; and that the social pain experienced in
engineering schools replicates culturally pervasive race and gender inequities.
Social pain diverts WOCE's cognitive resources away from their engineering
education and toward navigational strategies, as described below.
5.3 THEME III: NAVIGATION
The literature revealed a wealth of navigational strategies that WOCE used not
only to cope with the rigors of engineering education but more often to overcome
social pain. These strategies evoke Yosso's CCW concept of navigational capital,
which is the ability to maneuver through social “institutions not created with
Communities of Color in mind” (Yosso, 2005, p. 80), such as engineering programs
in U.S. higher education. The strategies also reveal students' deploying
linguistic capital (adaptable and multicultural communication skills) and
resistant capital (oppositional behavior to challenge inequities; Yosso, 2005).
The strategies we identified from the literature fall into four main categories:
(a) modifying internal dialogue and behaviors; (b) cultural adaptation; (c)
cultural self-affirmation; and (d) giving back.
5.3.1 MODIFYING INTERNAL DIALOGUE AND BEHAVIORS
WOCE demonstrated multiple tactics to achieve and cope with struggles by
modifying their internal dialogue and behaviors. As Parker (2013) asserted, this
may be because study participants “concluded that differential treatment or
sexism was something they would have to accept and learn how to work around,
especially for those women in male-dominated STEM fields” (p. 111). WOCE
recognized the contradictions between their identities and the engineering
context (Gorman, 2014; Parker, 2013). However, rather than changing the cultural
context, they modified their own behaviors and expectations in response to “the
contradictions they saw, experienced, and/or knew so that they could persist in
the culture ‘as is’” (Gorman, 2014, p. 198). WOCE's internal modifications
included denying their own cultural identity by passing as White and tolerating
racism by ignoring racist remarks or ignoring the circumstances in which they
were made invisible. Additionally, Gorman (2014) reported an avoidance strategy
of letting uncomfortable comments slide. However, Brown (2008) found that some
of these strategies were not employed without regret by some Hispanic
participants. WOCE also modified their internal dialogue and behavior by
practicing self-care, faith, and prayer to cope internally with discrimination
(Bush, 2013).
5.3.2 CULTURAL ADAPTATION
The literature describes other WOCE engaging in cultural adaptation by adopting
the dominant engineering culture through their language, behavior, and
appearance choices. This helped them to acclimate to the engineering culture or
gain access to the social networks of those in powerful positions (Chinn, 1999;
Gorman, 2014; Parker, 2013). For example, Chinn found that, to fit into their
engineering environments, Asian and Pacific Islander women students engaged in
nonfeminine dress, assertive behaviors and displays of confidence, overt
athleticism, and/or reduction of emotions and reactions (Chinn, 1999, 2002; also
see Gorman, 2014; Parker, 2013). Chinn (2002) further underscored how almost
being perceived as male was integral to one Asian American woman participant's
identity in engineering, who preferred “competing against males in terms of
competence instead of competing against females based on physical
attractiveness” (p. 313).
WOCE also culturally adapted to their predominantly White and male spaces by
skillfully communicating with their peers (Montgomery, 2009; Oden, 2003). Such
communication adaptations relate to Yosso's (2005) idea of linguistic capital,
which includes code switching and developing multiple styles to relate to
different audiences. An African American student in a study conducted by Oden
(2003) expressed the need to “choose [her] words a little more carefully” due to
the feelings of “constantly being examined for the level of [her] intelligence
and communication skills” (p. 110). In Montgomery's (2009) study, an African
American woman shared the “importance of ‘making the switch’ and developing a
‘habit of fitting into your surroundings’” when in predominantly White
environments (p. 111). However, for WOCE, it is not always easy nor desirable to
shed their multiple identities for the sake of adapting to the predominant
engineering culture (Alonso, 2012).
5.3.3 CULTURAL SELF-AFFIRMATION
Conversely to those adopting the dominant culture, some WOCE defied opposition
to their presence in engineering by choosing cultural self-affirmation with
strategies like back talk, confrontation, and resistance to marginalization.
These affirmational strategies align with Yosso's CCW concept of resistant
capital that challenges inequality, which includes practicing resistance
individually and in groups, and passing on oppositional practices to others
(Yosso, 2005). For example, in Chinn's (1999) study, Polynesian and Filipina
women participants back talked “to counteract the power of negative racial and
gender discourses” (p. 630). Similarly, WOCE in Gorman's (2014) study confronted
gender stereotypes and called out instructors who tried to humiliate them in the
presence of their peers. When Latina participants in Lord and Camacho's (2013)
study felt ignored or marginalized, they defended themselves by “sticking to
[their] guns” (p. 564) or standing up for themselves.
5.3.4 GIVING BACK
Finally, the literature points to WOC using the navigational strategy of giving
back, which helped to develop their engineering identities and served as a
motivational theme for their persistence in engineering. Alonso (2015) found
that “commitment to the community was integral to [the] engineering identity
development” (p. 63) of Latina/o undergraduates. This was demonstrated through,
for example, collaborating with their local Society of Hispanic Professionals in
Engineering chapter to do community outreach or organizing Noche de Ciencias
(Science Night) to teach science concepts to children from the community.
Multiple authors found that this drive to give back—by helping those who were
struggling, contributing to the accomplishments of their race/ethnicity, or
becoming a role model—motivated African American and Latina women to complete
their engineering programs (DeCuir-Gunby et al., 2013; Shain, 2002).
Participants in Mitchell's (2014) study reported wanting to increase the number
of students of color and women in the engineering field: “the high demand for
women and minorities in engineering and STEM fields were of the utmost
importance to motivating the participants to complete their programs in college”
(p. 82). Trenor et al.'s (2008) study suggests that giving back may be a
navigational strategy more characteristic of WOCE than other groups. They found
that African American/Black and Hispanic women participants wanted to give back
to their families, communities, or younger girls, whereas Asian and White women
in their study did not explicitly declare having similar desires. Trenor et al.
(2008) expressed surprise about their finding about Asian women given previous
research indicating high levels of family obligation in Asian American youth
(Fuligni & Pedersen, 2002).
The literature shows WOCE protecting themselves from social pain with the use of
different navigational strategies in order to persist within the dominant
culture of engineering. Engaging these strategies is an expense of time, energy,
and cognitive resources for WOCE—in addition to their course load—that can
impact persistence and success (Brown, 2008; Gorman, 2014; Rice & Alfred, 2014;
Shain, 2002). In the Discussion section below, we will address how institutions
might learn from such strategies and develop them into institutional supports
for WOCE. Next, we describe how support entities, from the individual to the
program level, are a protective factor for WOCE navigating engineering pathways
and environments.
5.4 THEME IV: SUPPORT ENTITIES
Our synthesis identified multiple and varied organizations, programs, groups,
and individuals that support WOCE to better navigate experiences of social pain
and persist in their studies. Three categories of support entities appeared as
central for supporting WOCE to complete their degrees: family, peers, and
programs. These groups may be considered safe spaces, or counterspaces (Ong et
al., 2018; Carter, 2007; Solórzano et al., 2000; Solórzano & Villalpando, 1998),
that help to counter the effects of social pain and affirm WOC's belonging in
engineering. Furthermore, applying and extending Yosso's CCW framework, we see
these support entities as representing familial capital, as they help WOCE
maintain ties to their communities and resources and reduce their sense of
isolation (Yosso, 2005; see also Villalpando & Solórzano, 2005). These support
entities also represent social capital, which refers to a network that provides
the individual with emotional support and reassurance that WOCE are “not alone
in the process of pursuing higher education” (p. 79). Of the successful support
systems found in the literature, it is notable that they are rarely constituted
by a single, one-to-one relationship. More typically they are made up of
networks and combinations of support entities. This aligns with findings from
Vazquez-Akim (2014) indicating that WOC who do not persist in engineering are
“less likely to reference a network of multiple and varied sources of support”
(p. 107).
5.4.1 FAMILIES
The literature showed that families, especially mothers, played a central role
in providing emotional support by nurturing, motivating, comforting, and
encouraging WOC to persist in their engineering studies (Brown, 2000, 2008;
Chinn, 1999; DeCuir-Gunby et al., 2013; Rice, 2011; Shain, 2002; Simon, 2011).
Parents inspired their children to achieve more than they themselves had (Simon,
2011); made sacrifices to enable their children's access to educational
resources and to show their pride in them (Chinn, 1999; Rice, 2011); provided
guidance and occasionally role models (Shain, 2002); and instilled a sense of
responsibility (Brown, 2000). Brown (2008) showed that among Latina science and
engineering students, mothers pushed their daughters to succeed in their
education by instilling a fear of becoming pregnant before finishing their
degrees, which the mothers argued would trap them in traditional gender roles.
However, the family's role could be contradictory, and even become a roadblock
to persistence, due to a lack of understanding of the daughter's chosen path of
study (Gorman, 2014); concerns about the daughter deviating from their
traditional gender and cultural roles (Brown, 2008); or unwelcome pressure to
succeed and be a role model for younger generations (Gorman, 2014).
For some WOCE, family played an important role by transmitting spiritual
principles that became emotional tools for coping with hardship
(Somerville-Midgette, 2014; Sosnowski, 2002), for example, the use of faith and
prayer as a navigational strategy (Bush, 2013). Under Yosso's (2005) definition
of family to include kin and broader support systems, church affiliation, as
connected to family life, appeared to be an important support. In some cases,
church could be a proxy for family, providing role models and guidance as
reported by a WOCE participant in Bush's (2013) study:
> I think that if I hadn't been so involved in my church back where I grew up
> and seeing all types of African Americans in various leadership roles, I don't
> know where I would have been. Because, again, I saw all the different
> opportunities and they were always open to discuss or talk to or guide you if
> you expressed an interest in something. My mom didn't know anything about this
> or she didn’t have expertise but she knew we'd go to church and she would
> basically say go talk to such and such so they can help you. (p. 84).
5.4.2 PEERS
The research literature suggests that undergraduate student peers within and
outside engineering routinely played key roles in supporting WOCE's persistence.
Tate and Linn (2005) found that “students maintain[ed] separate academic and
social peer networks with distinct members and purposes” (p. 489). WOCE
maintained peer groups within their discipline to reinforce their identity as
engineers and for academic support, whether or not those peers shared their
gender or ethnicity (Hackler, 2011; Litzler & Samuelson, 2013b; Martin, Simmons,
& Yu, 2013; Rice, 2011). These peers provided support in their successful use of
navigational strategies. In addition, WOCE cultivated groups of peers with their
same cultural background, or from other minority groups, regardless of academic
discipline (Oden, 2003; Shain, 2002). Members of these groups provided a broader
range of support, encompassing emotional encouragement, social comfort, the
celebration of their cultures, and connection over common experiences of
rejection (Alonso, 2015; Brown, 2008; Oden, 2003; Rice, 2011; Shain, 2002;
Simon, 2011). Peers from the same or similar cultural backgrounds provided safe
social environments that were respites from social pain.
In some cases, peers from both the same discipline and from a minoritized group
provided academic as well as emotional/social support. A WOCE participant in
Rice's (2011) study recalled an early undergraduate experience:
> My first quarter there, and I'm like, I have to get a team and nobody wanted
> me to be on their team. With one exception, and it never failed; it happened
> every class, the students from other countries, who were of color. The first
> time one of them came to me, and said … “you know I'm being rejected by my
> classmates, no one wants me to be … a part of their team, and so I'm just
> assuming that the same thing is happening to you, is that true?” I said “yes”
> (and they said) “so why don't we get together and have our own team?” … And
> guess what, these students were always the smartest in the class. I was like
> “ok I got the hook up!” (p. 204).
By teaming up, these students avoided the social pain caused by the rejection of
the other students and successfully leveraged navigational strategies of
collaboration with capable peers.
5.4.3 PROGRAMS
Programs and organizations to support engineering students typically included a
combination of services and supports that fostered the creation of social
networks. As such, they provided a foundation for the network or combination of
support sources that Vazquez-Akim (2014) identified as critical for persistence.
This type of network provided the grounds for increased self-efficacy and
reduced social pain among WOCE. The existing research literature covers a wide
diversity of support programs for WOCE: pre-college, community college to
college transition, residential, for women and/or minorities, summer programs,
and student organizations. We found the four points of convergence around the
benefits they provided described below.
ACCESS TO A PEER NETWORK FOR SOCIAL AND ACADEMIC SUPPORT
Programs and organizations provided WOCE with access to a variety of supports
that included a cohort of peers going through the same experiences and courses
(Brown, 2000; Litzler & Samuelson, 2013b); a sense of community and friends
(Brown, 2008; Litzler & Samuelson, 2013b); the formation of future professional
networks (Rice, 2011); help in acclimating to campus (Rice, 2011; Rice & Alfred,
2014); help in navigating educational and professional paths (Rice & Alfred,
2014); and an overall sense of diversity in the school (Vazquez-Akim, 2014). For
example, the African American women in the pre-college program that Rice and
Alfred (2014) studied built a women's supportive peer network that helped them
acclimate to campus. Litzler and Samuelson (2013b) found that students in
residential programs with long-term study groups for academic support built
“lasting relationships that [saw] them through college” (p. 16).
SOURCE OF SELF-CONFIDENCE AND MOTIVATION TO PERSEVERE
Participation in programs and organizations helped give WOCE a sense of personal
worth (Brown, 2008); a sense of competency in disciplinary areas (Brown, 2008;
Hackler, 2011); a sense of belonging in the group (Brown, 2008; Reyes, 2011);
and self-confidence when considering the workforce or graduate school (Hackler,
2011). For example, Brown (2008) found that Hispanic students who were invited
to participate in academic summer programs became confident and purposeful and
were given the message that they were very important members of the school.
Hackler (2011) found that participation in a project in a research center
strengthened WOCE students' self-perception and self-confidence in their
engineering skills so that they felt that they could compete in the job market.
RELATIONSHIPS WITH PROGRAM AND UNIVERSITY STAFF
Personnel such as program staff and university administrators provided a broad
array of supports to WOCE that spanned the academic, professional, and personal
spheres of students' lives. These included emotional supports, such as positive
recognition (Alonso, 2012) and motivation and encouragement (Rice & Alfred,
2014; Shain, 2002); mentoring and counsel, such as honest advice and first-hand
accounts (Jackson-Smith, 2015); and general academic and social support (Rice,
2011; Shain, 2002). These staff members also connected WOCE to supports and
resources by, for example, introducing them to key players who could help them
in the future (Litzler & Samuelson, 2013b); serving as resource brokers for
access to tutoring, internships, and professional organizations (Litzler &
Samuelson, 2013b; Reyes, 2011); and providing resources around financial aid and
scholarships (Rice, 2011; Rice & Alfred, 2014). Rice (2011) found that program
staff provided social comfort in the university environment as well as help in
navigating educational and professional paths. Furthermore, Rice and Alfred
(2014) found that the on-campus support provided by university administrators
served as a surrogate familial support system.
USE OF ON-CAMPUS RESOURCES TO FIND ADDITIONAL CAREER-RELATED OPPORTUNITIES
WOCE's participation in programs and organizations helped them find
career-related opportunities that would have not been otherwise accessible, such
as funding (Hackler, 2011; Reyes, 2011; Rice & Alfred, 2014); internships
(Hackler, 2011); research projects (Litzler & Samuelson, 2013a; Reyes, 2011);
and tutoring (Litzler & Samuelson, 2013a). For example, Litzler and Samuelson
(2013a) found that WOCE students who engaged with on-campus organizations, such
as the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) or offices for diversity, found
opportunities to conduct research. Reyes (2011) found that “retention was higher
among Futurebound [a National Science Foundation-funded program] students who
were engaged in programmatic efforts focused on supporting and nurturing women
of color, with attention paid to their specific challenges and strengths” (p.
255).
Across the literature regarding programs, we continually encountered the theme
of students wanting and needing these networks to re-create a surrogate family
support system. The highest praise that study participants could confer on a
program, organization, individual, or group was that they were like “a home away
from home” or “like family” (Alonso, 2015; Parker, 2013; Rice, 2011; Rice &
Alfred, 2014; Shain, 2002). The sense of family-like support most often
developed around community gatherings that provided members with social and
academic forms of support. These gatherings could be either formal, such as the
regular meetings in the Meyerhoff Scholars Program at the University of Maryland
(Rice, 2011), or informal, such as those in two engineering schools in the
Northeast (Shain, 2002) that included cultural foods and music and the sharing
of common experiences and information. Students reported that feeling like they
belonged was key, potentially buffering them against the social pain of being
the only one, being ignored, or being made invisible. These same supportive
relationships had the potential to aid the development of stronger self-efficacy
among WOCE, as we have seen earlier.
From our analysis of key support entities described in the literature, we see
that some engineering institutions provide a broad range of supports and promote
the creation of social networks that reproduce a family-like environment. Such
environments promote a sense of belonging, which reduces social pain and
improves student self-efficacy, which in turn can improve persistence and
retention. Below, we discuss the implications of these findings for
institutional practices and policies in support of WOC in engineering education.
6 DISCUSSION
In this systematic thematic synthesis, we have covered a broad array of factors
revealed by the literature that affect the experiences, participation, and
advancement of WOC undergraduates in engineering higher education. The
theoretical frames of CRT (Bell, 1995; Solórzano, 1997; Solórzano et al., 2000)
and intersectionality (Collins, 2000; Collins & Bilge, 2016; Crenshaw, 1991,
1993) bring into high relief how systemic gendered and raced oppressions
continue to be experienced in traditionally White and male spaces, such as
engineering education in particular, and in unique ways by persons who embody
intersecting, marginalized racial/ethnic and gender identities (Pawley, 2013,
2019). The CCW framework (Yosso, 2005, 2006; Yosso et al., 2009) assists in
understanding resiliency and persistence despite lived experiences of social
pain. We continue Denton et al.'s (2020) and Samuelson and Litzler's (2016)
application of CCW in the STEM/engineering context, with a deeper focus on WOC.
We developed four main themes described in the literature that encompass the
experiences of WOCE in undergraduate programs: interest, motivation, and
self-efficacy; social pain (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2005); navigation; and
support entities. Our analysis allowed for new groupings of data that shed light
on the ways that these factors support or hinder persistence and retention.
Additionally, we found insight into the interplay between internal, individual
motivational factors and external, structural supports, including institutional
interventions, as they relate to WOCE's participation and success. While this
synthesis is specific to WOCE, its findings and analysis may be relevant to
other STEM fields, especially physics and computer science, where WOC are
similarly underrepresented (NSF/NCSES, 2019).
The internal factors that we found motivating WOCE to participate and persist in
engineering include the promise of financial security for themselves and their
families (a form of aspirational capital, as described in Yosso, 2005); interest
in and preparedness for STEM studies; enjoyment of engineering in particular;
and self-efficacy. Although much of the literature points to self-efficacy (or
the lack thereof) as an important aspect of WOC's persistence, historically,
focusing only on student self-motivation has led to deficit-oriented models for
supporting students of color in education (Samuelson & Litzler, 2016) and has
inequitably located the burden of persistence on WOC (Ko, Kachchaf, Hodari, &
Ong, 2014; Vazquez-Akim, 2014). However, our study reveals that student
self-efficacy is malleable through outside intervention, especially by support
entities (Brown, 2008; Hackler, 2011; Jackson-Smith, 2015; Shain, 2002). The
study also identifies the factors for successful support systems for WOCE: a
complex strategy composed of various social networks that cultivate a
family-like atmosphere and sense of belonging (Alonso, 2015; Vazquez-Akim,
2014). Informed by CRT and intersectionality theory, we urge programs and
institutions of higher education to take responsibility for changing the
engineering education environment by developing such systems and supports that
strengthen WOCE's self-efficacy, and thus their persistence and retention in
engineering. These interventions will recognize that gendered and raced
oppressions are still prevalent and institutionalized in engineering education
programs and will be grounded in asset-based approaches in which WOCE's cultural
backgrounds are treated as strengths, not deficits.
Institutionalized inequities appear throughout the literature, captured in
WOCE's experiences of social pain (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2005) in its
different forms (i.e., being the only one, isolation, being made invisible,
stereotype threat, and discrimination and harassment). As intersectional beings
(Collins & Bilge, 2016; Crenshaw, 1991, 1993), WOC experience increased social
pain in environments such as engineering higher education that are traditionally
designed for the success of White, male students. We identified four categories
of navigational strategies being utilized by WOCE to mitigate the impacts of
social pain: modification of internal dialogue and behaviors, cultural
adaptation, cultural self-affirmation, and giving back. Such strategies draw on
the cultural wealth of navigation, linguistic, and resistant capital (Yosso,
2005). The dynamic and interacting nature of cultural capital (Samuelson &
Litzler, 2016) is evident in strategies such as cultural adaptation
(navigation/linguistic) and cultural self-affirmation (navigation/resistant).
Implementing navigational strategies to protect from social pain is a diversion
of resources—cognitive, emotional, time, and social capital—not required of
students who already “fit” the norms of the dominant engineering culture. To
expect WOCE to continually engage in these navigational strategies to lessen the
impact of social pain on their education experience is to misplace
responsibility for addressing, resolving, and eliminating institutional
inequities. Support entities are the factor in the literature tied most closely
to WOCE persisting in their programs. The literature shows that WOCE who have
multiple and varied sources of support are more likely to be successful. Three
categories of support entities emerged as central: family, peers, and programs.
These findings align with the CCW framework (Yosso, 2005), which claims that
such entities activate familial and social capital, creating a sense of
belonging through networks and an expanded sense of family. One key finding is
that WOCE expressed a need and desire for programs that recreate surrogate
familial support systems that provide them with a sense of caring and of
belonging as counterpoints to experiences of social pain.
In other words, the same qualities in support entities that improve the positive
internal factor of self-efficacy—complex, varied, and fostering belonging—also
decrease the negative external factor of social pain. This suggests institutions
can and should create programs and supports that utilize forms of CCW—for
example, familial and social capital—that are already assets for WOCE. These
supports, of course, do not happen on their own, so institutions need to
initiate and sustain them with policies and systematic training efforts. Below
are recommendations based on the literature for both formal and informal
supports that institutions of higher education should put in place to provide
the network of support and sense of belonging that will allow them to retain and
graduate successful WOCE.
7 RECOMMENDATIONS TO INSTITUTIONS, DEPARTMENTS, FACULTY, AND STAFF
For at least two decades, many U.S. institutions have sought to recruit WOC into
their engineering programs in response to a call from the National Academy of
Engineering to diversify engineering (Wulf, 2002) or from industry's demand for
creative solutions from a strong, diversified workforce (Gibbs, 2014; Page,
2007). Often, however, any supports provided as recruitment tools (e.g., summer
bridge programs) to entice WOC and other underrepresented students to enroll
typically disappear once those students enter their programs (Chang, Sharkness,
Hurtado, & Newman, 2014). Retention efforts are often scarce, yet when
institutions do offer them, they are usually rooted in deficit models that seek
to “fix” the students, for example, by providing tutoring or teaching them
“self-confidence,” rather than addressing oppressive institutional practices
through full-scale structural and cultural reforms (Malcom & Malcom, 2011; Ong
et al., 2018; Valencia, 2010). We posit that the reason diversity efforts do not
succeed on a larger scale is because current approaches are rooted in the
expectation that WOC and other non-White or women participants in engineering
conform to institutional cultures designed to exclude them. Below, we provide a
set of recommendations that seek to take the burden of conformity off of WOCE
and that subvert the typical approaches by suggesting ways that institutions can
change to become places of belonging for all students. These changes require
engaging in the hard work of recognizing that these institutional cultures and
expectations stem from a history of gender and racial/ethnic discrimination in
which White men have been held up as the standard and embodiment of success. We
acknowledge that it can be daunting to develop a course of action to address
these challenges, but this literature synthesis has revealed a set of actionable
strategies, drawn directly from on-the-ground research on experiences of WOC in
undergraduate engineering programs. These recommendations can be implemented by
institutions, departments, faculty, and staff to recruit and support WOCE so
that they can persist and succeed in engineering higher education and
institutions can begin to change their cultures. These strategies are only a
starting point; institutions, departments, faculty, and staff should also seek
to learn from their own students' experiences to build on these recommendations
with actions that are customized for their own student population and
departmental and institutional contexts.
7.1 OUTREACH AND RECRUITMENT
The literature on WOCE demonstrates that if higher education institutions are
interested in increasing WOC in their undergraduate engineering student bodies,
they must take the long view and make a long-term investment in recruitment. The
literature shows that successful institutions and departments developed
multiyear relationships with local middle schools, high schools, and community
colleges. These institutions made consistent, multiple efforts to engage girls
and young WOCE using a variety of strategies, including hosting workshops and
summer courses that introduced them to and engaged them in engineering (Bush,
2013; Tate & Linn, 2005); exposing WOCE to role models of similar racial/ethnic
and gender backgrounds (Maldonado et al., 2007; Rice, 2011); cultivating
mentorships (Lord, Camacho, Layton, & Ohland, 2010); and holding workshops and
summer programs explicitly for WOCE, recognizing that they may have needs
distinct from those of White women and men of color (Reyes, 2011; Trenor, Yu,
Waight, Zerda, & Sha, 2008). Institutions and departments that emulate these
actions would help plant seeds of self-efficacy and increase awareness about
engineering knowledge and careers for younger generations of WOC, while
benefiting from effective recruitment tools in their own institutions and
engineering programs (Chowdhury & Chowdhury, 2007). Reyes (2011) indicates how
these recruitment efforts can effectively expand to WOC in community colleges
and notes strong articulation agreements, regular communications between faculty
at the university and its community colleges, and regular invitations for
current community college students to take engineering-related courses and
conduct research at the university. Through persistent outreach and long-term
recruitment strategies, institutions and departments could increase the number
of WOCE in undergraduate programs, thus creating environments with a critical
mass of WOCE, which in itself has been found to be supportive of retention
(Simon, 2011).
At the same time, institutions need to go beyond a deficit perspective in which
outreach and recruitment goals are to increase numbers and improve WOCE's
self-efficacy (Malcom & Malcom, 2011; Ong et al., 2018). Instead, they need to
use these efforts as opportunities for institutional transformation, where both
potential students and institutions learn from each other. For true
transformation to occur, outreach and recruitment activities need to support a
change in the image of who is expected to become an engineer so that WOC are
actively welcomed and not simply sought as a means to achieve a representative
number.
7.2 RETENTION
The work of institutions and departments to bring WOC into engineering higher
education does not end with outreach and recruitment; it continues throughout
these students' education. The synthesis literature offers strategies for
retention that, although they often overlap and have interlocking goals, we have
classified here for easier reading.
7.2.1 HIRING DIVERSE FACULTY AND STAFF, TRAINING FOR INCLUSION, AND
ANTI-DISCRIMINATION POLICIES
The literature demonstrates that diverse and thriving engineering departments
strive to create and maintain an environment in which all students, including
WOC, feel they belong and are welcomed (Alonso, 2015; Brown, 2008; Reyes, 2011;
Vazquez-Akim, 2014). Departments should make intentional decisions to increase
the numbers of faculty, administrators, and staff who are WOC, as their very
presence and interactions with WOCE will be critical elements of WOC students'
support systems (DeCuir-Gunby, Long-Mitchell, & Grant, 2009; Simon, 2011). The
retention of WOC faculty, administrators, and staff is key to showing
institutional commitment to change. This effort goes beyond having a few token
WOC students and faculty (Kachchaf et al., 2015; Turner, González, & Wong,
2011). For this retention to be effective, institutions need to recognize,
account for, and reward invisible work that is typically done by WOC faculty,
such as mentoring students of color and representing both women and people of
color on university committees (Kachchaf et al., 2015; Lucero, 2002, 2003;
Turner, 2002). WOC faculty and staff are often burdened with these tasks in
addition to their academic workloads, yet this work is usually not as valued for
promotion and tenure as it should be. Retention of WOC faculty and staff in
engineering can be improved by more holistic assessments and acknowledgement of
their contributions.
Administrators also have a responsibility to provide training and resources to
all departmental faculty and staff that equip them to support WOC (and other
minoritized groups). In addition, faculty should seek training about classroom
interactions to help ensure that WOCE are comfortable in class and in the
department. Important training topics include (a) education about the crucial
role of administrators in admitting and of faculty in graduating WOCE (Simon,
2011); (b) tools to help students who are struggling (Sosnowski, 2002); (c)
training to address power dynamics and alleviate gender and racial bias in the
classroom (Litzler et al., 2011); and (d) awareness about the familial and
cultural responsibilities of WOC (Litzler et al., 2011; Reyes, 2011; Tharp,
2002). Administrators and faculty should take an assets-based approach to
interactions with WOCE, supported by deepening their own understanding of the
strengths and types of capital that WOC bring with them (Samuelson & Litzler,
2016; Yosso, 2005). Additionally, policies against harassment and discrimination
of any kind should be posted on the departmental website and in main offices.
There should be clear and quick processes for addressing sexual harassment and
discrimination (Gorman, 2014; also Corbett & Hill, 2015; National Academies of
Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018). In summary, departmental cultures
need to be transformed so that equitable policies and behaviors become the norm
and transgressions are addressed in a swift and firm manner. It is important to
note that WOCE should not be charged with the task of transforming the culture;
rather it should be the responsibility of the institutions.
7.2.2 IMPLEMENTING FORMAL AND INFORMAL SUPPORTS FOR WOCE
Since WOCE must expend so much time and energy on finding others like them and
developing strong networks in order to strive for a sense of belonging in
engineering (Brown, 2008; Gorman, 2014; Rice & Alfred, 2014; Shain, 2002),
faculty and staff should provide formal and informal supports that facilitate
these processes, thus reducing WOCE's resource expenditure. Successful formal
supports have included professional development opportunities, such as
internships and research opportunities for WOCE (Chowdhury & Chowdhury, 2007;
Mitchell, 2014); mentoring (Jackson-Smith, 2015); experiential education through
professional organizations (Reyes, 2011; Rice & Alfred, 2014); and other
enrichment efforts beyond the typical summer bridge programs, such as a
year-round, cohort-based model for students of color (Vazquez-Akim, 2014).
Additionally, formal supports can extend to enabling the formation of and
participation in professional counterspaces (Ong et al., 2018). For example,
departments might fund student memberships to professional organizations and
regularly pay for participation at conferences, such as the annual meetings of
the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) or the Society of Women Engineers
(SWE), where WOCE would likely see many others who look like themselves (Reyes,
2011; Rice & Alfred, 2014; also Ong et al., 2018).
Departments should consider hosting a chapter of NSBE, SWE, or the Society of
Hispanic Professional Engineers on their campuses and encourage WOCE to take
leadership roles (Sosnowski, 2002; also Ong et al., 2018). As a retention
strategy, departments should offer opportunities for WOCE students to give back
by mentoring younger college peers or by introducing engineering skills to
students of color at a local high school (Alonso, 2015; DeCuir-Gunby et al.,
2013; Mitchell, 2014; Trenor et al., 2008). Finally, faculty and staff should
consider developing programs that are explicitly for WOC in STEM and, thus,
consider their particular intersectional needs. The University at Buffalo's (UB)
STEMinism group is one such example. Created in conjunction with the
university's counseling services and led by a Black female staff member in the
School of Engineering, the STEMinism group strives to support WOC students,
faculty, and staff. The group, which meets biweekly, describes its goals as
providing “a safe and supportive space for women of color in science,
technology, engineering and mathematics fields to address concerns related to
identity, psychosocial stressors, school-work-life balance and other factors,
that may impact their academic functioning in undesirable ways” (University at
Buffalo, n.d.). In addition, UB STEMinism offers participants professional
development, mentoring, and social activities that enable WOC in STEM to support
one another.
Administrators and faculty can also provide informal supports that enhance
WOCE's sense of belonging. For example, staff in STEM departments might
collaborate to provide WOCE with resources such as potential student allies or
peer groups, or informal in-person or virtual forums where WOCE could discuss
problems and successes (Alonso, 2015; Oden, 2003; Rice, 2011; Shain, 2002; Tate
& Linn, 2005). Also, a department's offering of extracurricular opportunities,
such as sports, artistic expression, cultural events, or community activism, can
support positive mental health and increase a sense of belonging in engineering
for WOCE (Sosnowski, 2002).
These formal and informal supports need to be integrated within the
institutional fabric so that they truly transform the institutional expectations
of how WOCE are to be treated. For WOCE, accessing these supports should no
longer be perceived as a weakness, but as a strength signaling that they are
being proactive in solving the difficulties they encounter.
7.2.3 ALTERING THE CURRENT ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE AND CREATING A SURROGATE
FAMILY IN ENGINEERING
One of the key factors identified in the literature for increasing WOCE's
retention is a sense of familial closeness in engineering programs that includes
supportive relationships that go beyond the academic realm (Alonso, 2015;
Parker, 2013; Rice, 2011; Rice & Alfred, 2014; Vazquez-Akim, 2014). Most current
engineering educational environments are experienced by WOC as individualistic,
isolating, competitive, and chilly (Alonso, 2012; Bush, 2013; Frillman et al.,
2010; Parker, 2013) because they conform to the cultural norms of the White male
majority. Thus, administrations and departments that implement policies and
practices to encourage familial closeness could give themselves an advantage in
retaining WOCE. Faculty are some of the professionals with whom WOCE interact
the most through their studies. Therefore, their role in being supportive and
providing a sense of belonging is fundamental. In addition to seeking training,
faculty should develop mentoring relationships with WOCE and take part in
activities with WOC students, both of which signal support through participation
and presence. For example, the first author, Ong, documented the development of
familial closeness during a multiyear evaluation of a biomedical engineering
program for undergraduate students of color at a public institution. The program
had implemented semiannual social outings for students and faculty that included
bowling, game nights, picnics in the park, and a local boat cruise. One student
commented, “All of the events, especially the cruise, greatly humanized the
professors. That has really made them more approachable.” Another stated, “The
[game night] was really great. What I liked about it was that we're a small unit
here [in the program] and you can interact with everyone else. Then, you go to
take classes with them and you can have someone who you can identify with. … So,
it's a whole family feeling.” Activities like these that facilitate
approximating a sense of family also help students develop social capital by
providing opportunities to network with peers, professors, and engineering
professionals. Such opportunities should be tailored to the schedules of
students who may be working or have other responsibilities (Trenor et al.,
2008).
Department and administration staff can also be instrumental in keeping WOCE
connected to their programs and in providing a “surrogate familial support
system” (Rice, 2011, p. 202). This might look like department administrators who
take time to know WOCE students' names and listen compassionately to their
concerns, or financial aid and human resources staff who provide help and
encouragement (Rice & Alfred, 2014). WOCE must have the sense that faculty and
peers value their identities as WOC simultaneously with their engineering
identities (Gorman, 2014) and support their academic, social, and intellectual
identities (Tate & Linn, 2005). The formal and informal programmatic supports
for WOCE detailed earlier should emphasize support for intersectional
identities, the development of a sense of belonging and family, and the creation
of stronger networks (Brown, 2000; Parker, 2013). Implementing these
recommendations would likely increase departmental cohesion and morale and
might, therefore, enhance the retention not just of WOCE but also of other
students, particularly members of other minoritized groups such as women and
students of color.
The types of supports, educational experiences, and engagements we have
described here do not happen on their own, nor should WOCE be charged with
implementing them. Institutions, departments, and faculty who understand the
critical need for recruitment, retention, and advancement of WOCE must initiate
and sustain them through policy implementation and systematic training efforts
that are sensitive to gender and racial/ethnic differences of the populations
that they intend to serve. Training and policy implementation should be
reinforced by systems of accountability. Department and institutional leaders
should provide consistent guidance to staff and faculty on how to integrate new
learning into daily classroom practices and student interactions. By providing
these supports, institutions of engineering can change their institutional
culture to one where everyone belongs, enhance WOCE's self-efficacy, develop the
types of capital that will benefit them moving forward, and advance a more
diverse and innovative engineering student body and workforce.
8 CONCLUSION AND RESEARCH RECOMMENDATIONS
In developing this synthesis, we observed two interrelated trends in the
literature. On the one hand, the literature described how, without institutional
support in the form of organized programs, the social settings in undergraduate
education in engineering reproduced patterns of discrimination that perpetuate
race and gender inequity through social interactions. Our analysis made evident
these patterns of discrimination as the theme of social pain was prevalent in
descriptions of feelings of isolation, incidents of stereotype threat, and
experiences of harassment, to name a few. That these forms of social pain can be
observed in literature produced within the last two decades indicates that
larger historical inequities of power and privilege in U.S. culture—between
White people and people of color, between men and women, and between those who
fit “ideal norms” and those who live at the intersections of multiple
identities—are still active in education environments, including in engineering
higher education.
On the other hand, we found descriptions in the literature of organized
environments, such as professional and student organizations, summer programs,
and centers for women and/or students of color, providing surrogate familial
systems to WOCE that included social and academic networks. Through
participation in these programs, WOCE were more likely to succeed, and through
these concerted efforts to support WOCE's success, institutions were able to
circumvent and possibly start changing their cultural patterns of
discrimination. From these contrasting but interrelated trends in the
literature, we conclude that the path forward for institutions to retain more
WOCE in undergraduate programs is to provide sustained institutional programs
that explicitly buffer WOCE against ingrained patterns of social interaction
that perpetuate discrimination and that seek to change institutional culture.
More research is necessary to unveil the reality and experiences of WOCE, to
understand the impact and effectiveness of programs that target them, and to
understand demographic trends around engineering education. Research should
study the intersection of gender (including gender and sexual minorities),
race/ethnicity, and engineering, including engineering subdisciplines, from
different methodological and theoretical perspectives. For instance, areas to be
examined through quantitative research include enrollment, persistence, and the
differences among particular groups of students by race/ethnicity, gender,
sexuality, class, path to engineering higher education, and other factors. Only
a small number on such topics regarding WOCE have been published during the time
frame of our study (Atwaters & Tao, 2015; Eng & Layne, 2002; Frehill, 2004;
Leonard et al., 2013; Litzler et al., 2011; Lord et al., 2009, 2010; Lord &
Camacho, 2013; Lord, Layton, & Ohland, 2011, 2014a, 2014b; Lord, Layton, Ohland,
& Orr, 2013; Marra et al., 2009; Nelson & Brammer, 2010; Nelson & Rogers, 2003;
Ohland et al., 2011; Ohland, Lord, & Layton, 2015; Ohland, Orr, Layton, Lord, &
Long, 2012; Ohland, Orr, Lundy-Wagner, Veenstra, & Long, 2012; Orr, Lord,
Layton, & Ohland, 2014; Ro & Loya, 2015; Trenor, Yu, Sha, Zerda, & Waight,
2007). Moreover, researchers should consistently collect and report data that
are disaggregated by race/ethnicity and gender, paying particular attention to
data about women in minoritized racial or ethnic groups (Leonard et al., 2013).
Areas to be examined through qualitative research include WOCE's experiences in
the intersection of race/ethnicity, gender, and their major (Lord et al., 2010).
Researchers should also keep in mind the potential for mixed methods research to
unveil findings inaccessible through a single methodological approach.
We consider that continued synthesis of relevant literature in this area should
be part of a healthy research environment. We recommend that quality assessment
of literature pieces be part of any literature synthesis to ensure that the
works included are worth reading, citing, and considering when designing
programs as recommended in earlier literature (Borrego et al., 2015).
As stated above, our searches for studies for this synthesis included WOCE in
both higher education and careers. For the purpose of this article, we focused
exclusively on undergraduate students. However, we found only a limited number
of articles about WOC faculty and professionals in engineering (Berry, Farmer
Cox, & Main, 2014; Bush, 2013; DeCuir-Gunby et al., 2009; DeCuir-Gunby et al.,
2013; Lucero, 2003; Nelson & Brammer, 2010; Nelson & Rogers, 2003; Rice, 2011;
Rice & Alfred, 2014; Simon, 2011; Somerville-Midgette, 2014; Tharp, 2002) and
recommend that more research be conducted on this population. Even more limited
was the literature on WOCE graduate students (Atwaters & Tao, 2015; Frehill,
2004; Morell, 2002; Oden, 2003; Ohland et al., 2012; Tran, Herrera, & Gasiewski,
2011), and we recommend more research on this population as well.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation
Grants EEC-1427129 and HRD-1760845. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or
recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Some
preliminary ideas in this article were presented in March 2019 during the Women
in STEM Cooperative, The Next 10 Years: Helping STEM Students Thrive Webinar
Series at Harvard University. The authors gratefully acknowledge Dr. Apriel
Hodari for her work in co-leading the literature searches and coding that
contributed to this paper. They also give a special thanks to the F. D. Bluford
Library at North Carolina A&T State University and to Drs. Michelle Camacho,
Nida Denson, Sandra Hanson, Susan Lord, and Matthew Ohland for sharing
resources. The authors are also very thankful to Christina Bebe Silva, Jennifer
Haley, Dr. Jodut Hashmi, Dr. Alice Pawley, and Dr. Janet Smith for their
critical assistance in the writing process and to the Engineering Beyond the
Double Bind project advisors for their continuous support of the work. The
authors are grateful to the JEE reviewers and editors who guided the development
of this article.
APPENDIX: NOTABLE WORKS ON WOMEN OF COLOR IN ENGINEERING PUBLISHED APRIL
2015–OCTOBER 2019 A
The search phase of this project closed in March 2015, and studies on the
experiences of women of color in engineering have continued to emerge. A
selection of more recent studies for readers' further exploration is listed
here.
Alonso, R. A. R. (2015). Engineering identity development of Latina and Latino
members of Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. Proceedings of the ASEE
Annual Conference & Exposition, Seattle, WA. https://doi.org/10.18260/p.23967
Banda, R. M., & Flowers, A. M. (2017). Birds of a feather do not always flock
together: A critical analysis of Latina engineers and their involvement in
student organizations. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 16(4), 359–374.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1538192716662966
Blakley, J. (2016). A qualitative study of African American women in engineering
technology programs in community colleges (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved
from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (Order No. 10119244).
Bowman, K. J. (2015). Engineering degree trends for African American women and
men. Proceedings of the ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Seattle, WA.
https://doi.org/10.18260/p.23956
Foster, C. H. (2016). Hybrid spaces for traditional culture and engineering: A
narrative exploration of Native American women as agents of change (Unpublished
doctoral dissertation). Arizona State University, Tucson, AZ.
Fuselier Thompson, D. R. (2018). Cultural capital in urban communities as a
pathway to engineering at a predominantly white institution: Narratives of
African American women in engineering (Unpublished doctoral dissertation).
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL.
Gregory, S. L. (2015). African American female engineering students' persistence
in stereotype-threatening environments: A critical race theory perspective
(Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Utah State University, Logan, UT.
Guerin, A. (2018). Unpacking the double bind: Exploring how the intersection of
race and gender shape the undergraduate experiences of African American women in
engineering (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Louisiana State University,
Baton Rouge, LA.
Jordan, S. S., Foster, C. H., Anderson, I. K., Betoney, C. A., & Pangan, T. J.
D. (2019). Learning from the experiences of Navajo engineers: Looking toward the
development of a culturally responsive engineering curriculum. Journal of
Engineering Education, 108(3), 355–376. https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20287
LaMotte, E. M. D. (2016). Unique and diverse voices of African American women in
engineering at predominately White institutions: Unpacking individual
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BIOGRAPHIES
* Maria (Mia) Ong is a Senior Research Scientist at TERC, 2067 Massachusetts
Avenue, Cambridge, MA, 02140; maria_ong@terc.edu
* Nuria Jaumot-Pascual is a Research Scientist at TERC, 2067 Massachusetts
Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02140; nuria_jaumot-pascual.edu
* Lily T. Ko is an Independent Consultant at TERC, 2067 Massachusetts Avenue.
Cambridge, MA 02140; lilytko@gmail.com
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CITING LITERATURE
Volume109, Issue3
July 2020
Pages 581-615
* FIGURES
* REFERENCES
* RELATED
* INFORMATION
RECOMMENDED
* The correlation between undergraduate student diversity and the
representation of women of color faculty in engineering
Joyce B. Main, Li Tan, Monica F. Cox, Ebony O. McGee, Andrew Katz,
Journal of Engineering Education
* Conducting Rigorous Research in Engineering Education
Ruth A. Streveler, Karl A. Smith,
Journal of Engineering Education
* Faculty Perspectives Regarding the Undergraduate Research Experience in
Science and Engineering
Andrew L. Zydney, Joan S. Bennett, Abdus Shahid, KarenW. Bauer,
Journal of Engineering Education
* Counterspaces for women of color in STEM higher education: Marginal and
central spaces for persistence and success
Maria Ong, Janet M. Smith, Lily T. Ko,
Journal of Research in Science Teaching
* Learning from small numbers: Studying ruling relations that gender and race
the structure of U.S. engineering education
Alice L. Pawley,
Journal of Engineering Education
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