Matthew, this research will be of great interest to the AGEP-NC (North Carolina Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate) community. I'd like to share this with them. Also, I'd love to learn about your findings in more detail. The AGEP-NC project has a video in this Showcase as well, that will tell you a little about what we are doing.  The AGEP-NC website, agep-nc.org has more information.

Marcia, thank you so much! The projects seem to share some interests. I would be happy to share the video with your team or provide a more detailed overview of the project. 

We are currently working on quantitative analyses that demonstrate 1) the importance of advisor relationships for identity development and doctoral degree completion with significant differences for women and minoritized groups in their advisor relationships; and 2) the negative impact of sexism and racism on graduate engineering identity development that indirectly impacts doctoral degree completion intentions for women and minoritized racial and ethnic groups. 

Matthew - thank you for this important work! I'm curious if you or your team is also engaged with piloting or evaluating any interventions that implement your recommendations?

Barry - We are not currently working on any interventions. However, intervention development and testing would be a great next step!

Matthew- This is a fascinating study with recommendations that have the potential to change the landscape for engineers. I am curious about how you recommend approaching anti-racist and anti-sexist training/ social justice. Do you envision these becoming standard subject matter in engineering curriculum? Should there be different types of training for undergraduates and graduate students?

Margie - I see integrating anti-racist and anti-sexist training into the general coursework as the most effective method. Integration allows students to apply the training to their engineering coursework as they continue degree progress. In addition, integrating social justice concepts into engineering ethics courses may help deepen students' understanding of the importance of equity and justice in applied engineering. 

Training should meet the students as developing engineers. The justice work needed for an introductory course for engineers is likely broad and general, while graduate students need to more clearly integrate social justice into their engineering solutions.

Thank you for the questions!

Matthew: Excellent video and one that could serve well as a prompter for discussions.  It reminds me of work we did years ago looking at how engineers can discuss ethical issues associated with emerging science and technology.  A key learning that for graduate students, authentic dialogue needed the engagement of those in power relationship to the grad students - most particularly advisors and lab leaders.

This is a really important topic. One thing we have heard anecdotally from groups like STEM Thrive Guides (https://www.stemthriveguides.com) is that incidents of discrimination not only affect the students involved, but they can have a chilling affect on many the at-risk students at an institution. I wonder if your data sheds any light on these ripple effects.

One of the important things about your Discrimination in Engineering Graduate Education scale is that once you can data from many institutions you will be able to identify which institutions that are more effective at reducing discrimination. That will really help us understand how to combat this.

This is very exciting work! Over the past year, there has been increased focus on inequality and related topics in society broadly and at academic institutions. Did this impact your data collection? Do you plan to explore this with year one participants?

I love the mixed methods approach to this important question! Great work! 

Very useful program and insights for students!

I was wondering if the same survey was given to white males for comparing the difference in sentiment. Also, did you look at the more subtle micro-aggressive behaviors?  .