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Abstract
This article highlights the STEM journey of four women of color that matriculated at four different types of universities (R1, PWI; HBCU; private, religious-based PWI; and an international HSI university) for their undergraduate STEM degrees. The ethnographical narratives shared by each, informed lessons learned about stereotype threat, imposter phenomenon, and the chilly environment that is present within male dominated STEM fields. The authors offer recommendations to reduce the consequences of these issues to include deliberate STEM identity development and STEM mentoring. Framed by the CLIC (content learning and identity construction) theoretical framework and Collins' (2018) Black student STEM Identity model (BSSI), vertical mentoring and service-learning best practices are discussed along with initial results of a pilot study designed to address these issues.
Introduction
Women and minorities in America continue to be a very underutilized source of human capital in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). There is an overall low concentration of both subgroups in STEM relative to the number of women and minorities in the overall workforce and that hold STEM degrees. Whether categorized by workforce or STEM degrees, non-Hispanic white males make up the majority of individuals identified as scientists or engineers (The National Science Foundation & National Science Board, 2020). NSB's 2020 science & engineering indicators showed that while in the last twenty five years women's presence in the broad area of science and engineering has significantly increased by degrees and within the workforce, the enormous disparity between men and women has shown insignificant improvements: Marked by the year that the first of these four featured women received her undergraduate STEM degree, in 1993 working women earned 43% of all college degrees and represented 31% of individuals with doctoral, science and engineering degrees that were hired in the field. Yet, disproportionately, they represented only 23% of the overall science and engineering field workforce. In 2017, working women earned 52% of all college degrees and accounted for 45% of those with doctoral degrees in science and engineering, but still represented only 29% of those working directly in engineering and science fields. Researchers have attributed this to complex factors in the science and engineering discipline that include gender discrimination, disparity in grant funding and opportunities, and inequity in scholarly manuscript reviewing (Ceci...