Centering Women of Color in STEM: Identifying and Scaling Up What Helps Women of Color Thrive

Eureka Scientific Inc, Oakland CA

Investigators

Abstract

The economic prosperity of the United States relies on progress in science, the advancement of national health initiatives, and overall national prosperity in an increasingly technical economy. This prosperity relies on a talented workforce with the ability to nimbly address new challenges and develop innovative technologies. Colleges and universities can best prepare this future workforce by ensuring that educational environments are effective for a diverse range of students. In the United States from 2001-2012 women received 20% of the bachelor's degrees granted in physics, but Black women and Latinas received only 2%. While women also received about 20% of engineering and computer science bachelor's degrees, only a modestly higher percentage of those women - when compared to their colleagues in physics - are Black and Latina: 3.4% in engineering and 6% in computer science. This project will build on prior work studying STEM departments at coeducational, predominantly white institutions in which women of color are thriving. In prior studies, few of the over 600 women of color found support within their own undergraduate departments. This project will explore actions STEM professors can take so that women of color can find support within their departments rather than having to seek refuge from those departments. Researchers from Eureka Scientific, Inc. and St. Mary's College of Maryland will conduct in-depth, mixed-method studies of out-performing STEM departments in the United States and England in which women of color are thriving in numbers significantly higher than averages elsewhere. The project will serve to identify shared approaches across these departments; develop a body of tested, practical elements of success that STEM departments can adopt; and a set of measures that will let the departments monitor the success of their transformation process. The project will advance research-based knowledge to promote systemic change in STEM education and will provide a clearer understanding about factors that promote success for young women of color in a variety of institutional contexts. The project will culminate in a meeting with participants from 11 institutions who will examine the applicability of the findings at their home institutions including: doctoral universities, master's universities, baccalaureate colleges, open enrollment, public and private institutions.