WIP: A Case for Disaggregating Demographic Data

Abstract

Heather entered the Applied Social and Community Psychology program in the fall of 2014, after completing her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Cincinnati. She has participated in various research projects examining the interaction between stereotypes and science interest and confidence, their influence upon womens' performance in school and the workplace, and their presence in the media and consequences for viewers. Her primary research interest is science identity, STEM education, and participation in online communities.

Students’ Experiences of Unfairness in Graduate Engineering Education

“…Unfair treatment from the faculty groups did not significantly impact the interest sub-construct for gender or race/ethnicity identities. The importance of the recognition and performance/competence subconstructs reinforces previous research connecting engineer identity to educational experiences and advisor relationships as influenced by gender and race/ethnicity [19], [34], [35]. While we did not measure change over time, the long-term implications of lower or suppressed graduate engineering identity may further erode the likelihood of persistence for traditionally underserved graduate engineering students.…”

“…As shown in this work, students experience unfair treatment from advisors and faculty impacting engineering identity development. Conflicts between roles (teacher, researcher, and student) may disrupt transitioning to a professional engineer identity [34]. As students experience role conflict, unfair treatment may further disrupt professional engineering identity.…”

“…The disruption of changing labs may also increase role conflict as role expectations may change between labs and universities. Strong graduate student engineer identity is essential for persistence, career choice and may help students transition to professional identities [19], [21], [34].…”

“…Positive research group peer interactions in which students experience support in developing research, scholarly communication, and teaching skills support engineering identity development [29], [31 -33]. Similarly, positive advisor and research peer relationships support strong engineer identity development [19], [34], [35]. Women of Color showed higher GEI scores than white Women when they experienced positive advisor relationships [23].…”

Work in Progress: An Intersectional Conceptual Framework for Understanding How to Measure Socioeconomic Inequality in Engineering Education

“…To create intersectional groups, we will follow the procedures outlined by Bahnson et al [33] to create separate race-gender groups that go beyond controlling for race and gender (i.e. "Black-Women", "Hispanic-Men, "White-Women", etc).…”