engineering education programs which necessitatesworking relationships between peers. This group nature brings students of differing identitiestogether, meeting frequently outside of classroom hours or instructor monitored interactions. Thestudents identified group projects, laboratory work, and classroom interactions as a particularhurdle towards engineering peers being a part of their social support networks. This seems tomirror literature which describes a gendered engineering student dynamic where womenexperience negative interactions and diminished project roles in team-based settings [40, 41].The additional layer of being transgender women complicates the ability to draw clear parallelsto existing studies on women in engineering, which often
microsystem can be described as settings or environments with which an individual interactson a regular basis. An example of typical microsystems would include schools, classrooms,offices, laboratories, and even, makerspaces. According to Bailey et al., microsystems can oftenhave different effects on the individual, where each environment brings about a differentinfluence, just as the individual interacts with each environment in a unique way [26]. 5Critical Race Theory - Counter-storytellingCritical Race Theory (CRT) is utilized as a framework in studies where racial inequalities in asociety are addressed and analyzed, in this case, the White, male