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BackgroundWomen and students of color are widely underrepresented in most STEM fields. In order to investigate this underrepresentation, we interviewed 201 college seniors, primarily women and people of color, who either majored in STEM or started but dropped a STEM major. Here we discuss one section of the longer interview that focused on students’ sense of belonging, which has been found to be related to retention. In our analysis, we examine the intersections of race and gender with students’ sense of belonging, a topic largely absent from the current literature.ResultsWe found that white men were most likely to report a sense of belonging whereas women of color were the least likely. Further, we found that representation within one’s STEM sub-discipline, namely biology versus the physical sciences, impacts sense of belonging for women. Four key factors were found to contribute to sense of belonging for all students interviewed: interpersonal relationships, perceived competence, personal interest, and science identity.ConclusionsOur findings indicate that students who remain in STEM majors report a greater sense of belonging than those who leave STEM. Additionally, we found that students from underrepresented groups are less likely to feel they belong. These findings highlight structural and cultural features of universities, as well as STEM curricula and pedagogy, that continue to privilege white males.

For more than 40 years, communities across the United States have grappled with Brown's mandate to provide equality of educational opportunities to Black children by ending school segregation. Despite considerable unambiguous evidence that desegregation enhances students' long-term outcomes such as educational and occupational attainment, the situation with respect to short-term outcomes is more ambiguous and more highly contested. Using survey data from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, a North Carolina district that used mandatory busing to desegregate its schools, the author demonstrates the direct and indirect negative effects of segregation on academic achievement in ways not employed previously. The distinctive research design includes a longitudinal measure of exposure to racially isolated Black elementary education, multiple indicators of educational outcomes, measures of track placement, and a large representative sample of grade 12 students from the entire school system. By demonstrating how both direct and indirect effects of segregated education impair Blacks' academic outcomes, and how-even in an ostensibly desegregated school system-Whites retain privileged access to greater opportunities to learn, this article increases our understanding of the role of segregated schooling in maintaining the racial gap in academic achievement. Future research in other school districts once believed to be successfully desegregated will allow us to judge whether the situation in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School district reflects a more general pattern.

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