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Imperfect Interventions for Speaking Up and Supporting Women in STEM

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Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Women in Engineering Division (WIED) Technical Session 7

Tagged Division

Women in Engineering Division (WIED)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

15

DOI

10.18260/1-2--43505

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/43505

Download Count

226

Paper Authors

biography

Kristen Moore University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

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Kristen R. Moore is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at University at Buffalo. Her research focuses primarily on technical communication and issues of equity, inclusion, and social justice.

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biography

Meg Handley Pennsylvania State University

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Meg Handley is an Associate Teaching professor and Director Undergraduate Programs for Engineering Leadership. Meg completed her PhD in Workforce Education at Penn State, where she focused on interpersonal behaviors and leadership for early-career engineers. She teaches engineering leadership and an engineering leader coaching course. Her research focuses on coaching skills, inclusive leadership, and career development.

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Jessica Dolores Menold Pennsylvania State University

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Abstract

In the past several decades, Engineering and STEM programs have seen an influx of initiatives run for and by women* to support the recruitment, retention, sense-of-belonging and success for women in STEM. One such program at R1 Northeastern University focuses on transforming traditionally masculinist maker spaces by centering the priorities, values, needs, and projects of women and marginalized engineers. Despite the need for and successes of this program (and others like it), they enter into a complex political moment: as women fight for support and space in traditionally male industries, men push back; as women carve out space for gender equality, the need for racial equality also looms large.

In this paper, we offer a case study of how to lead through this kind of complex situation through a coalitional approach to interventions. Drawing on Yin’s approach to case study and a participatory action research frame, we ask, “How can leaders quickly and ethically respond to pushback that threatens to do harm against marginalized and vulnerable student groups? And, further, how do we also anticipate the imperfection of emergent strategies?

Our case study centers on the development of an intervention, developed coalitionally, when a women’s STEM group faced backlash against their missions. By situating the case study within two frames (coalitional responses and intersectionality) we articulate the problems facing the women’s group, the coalitions required to respond to these problems, and the imperfection of our interventions from an intersectional standpoint.

Moore, K., & Handley, M., & Menold, J. D. (2023, June), Imperfect Interventions for Speaking Up and Supporting Women in STEM Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43505

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