I Never Played the 'Girl Card': Experiences and Identity Intersections of Women Student Veterans in Engineering

Abstract

Rebecca works full time in new student orientation at Clemson University. She is in her fourth year of her doctoral degree in educational leadership. Her research interests include women student veterans and competency development from military experience. She has 15 years of higher education experience including a stint working at the U.S. Naval Academy. Rebecca is also the daughter of a U.S. Military Academy graduate.

Board 94: Military Veteran Students’ Pathways in Engineering Education (Year 5)

“…Ms. Atkinson investigated the experiences of women veterans and was first author on a paper reporting these results that she presented at the 2018 ASEE Conference in the Military and Veterans Division. 20 This was her first research publication. This publication has provided the foundation for her dissertation on women veterans.…”

“…In addition to this paper for the 2019 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference NSF Grantees Poster Session, this project has yielded two published journal articles [9,10] and thirteen published conference papers [11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23]. We did a presentation at the 2019 CoNECD conference in April 2019 [24] and have two papers for the ASEE conference in June 2019 [25,26].…”

Board 89: Military Veteran Students’ Pathways in Engineering Education (Year 4)

“…To date, in addition to this paper for the ASEE 2018 NSF Grantees Poster Session, this project has yielded nine published conference papers, 6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14 two conference presentations for conferences in Spring 2018, 15,16 one conference special session, 17 two conference workshop presentations, 18,19 and an informal session at the 2018 Student Veterans of America (SVA) national conference. We are especially pleased that one of our papers received the Best Paper Award in the Military and Veterans Division of the American Society of Engineering Education in 2017.…”

The Methodological Promise of Narrative Inquiry for Exploring Student Veteran and Service Member Experience as "People in Relation"

“…(1) Scholars have reported difficulties identifying and gaining access to SVSM as research participants (and particularly non-persisting SVSM) who tend keep their veteran identity hidden in academic and civilian settings limits the range of SVSM experiences that can be explored [7,53]. Difficulty accessing non-persisting SVSM, who may experience transitions from the military to school much differently than persisters, is the more serious limitation.…”

“…Scholars have reported difficulties unpacking unique engineering SVSM experiences which often exist at the intersection of multiple, underserved identities (i.e., gender, nontraditional, first generation, minority, disabled, etc.). (Atkinson, 2018) The situated nature of the storied data that is collected in NI, as well as the narrative approach to analysis of the data, lends itself to unpacking intersectionalities and specifics of experience. The act of doing narrative analysis requires that the individual events of a story, and the actions that are taken in response to those events, are chronicled in time and then analyzed for meaning and effect.…”