Black students face repeated racial microaggressions that may challenge their mental health and academic performance in engineering doctoral programs. Researchers attribute this to stereotypes and institutional climates that juxtapose their STEM and racial identities as incongruent. In this article, we analyzed the perceptions of environmental, behavioral, and verbal racial microaggressions of 33 Black doctoral students and postdocs, with a focus on their interactions with non‐Black peers. Data were collected through semi‐structured interviews with Black doctoral students from 11 Predominantly White Institutions in the United States. To analyze the experiences of our participants, we utilized two theoretical frameworks: Racial microaggressions and identity nonverification. Across the interviews, participants described various forms of racial microaggressions that greatly challenged their sense of belonging and identities as engineers. This research affirms the need to develop initiatives at the departmental and institutional levels to encourage more inclusive spaces for diverse students in STEM doctoral programs and to combat the types of exclusionary practices found in this study.

Black doctoral students in engineering and computing fields experience racialized stress, as structural racism in STEM takes a toll on their sense of belonging and acceptance as intellectually competent in comparison to White and some Asian peers and faculty. Black doctoral students are often told by campus administrators that the source of this racialized stress is impostorism and it is curable. In this article, we employ phenomenological analysis to examine how 54 Black engineering and computing students experience racism marketed as impostor syndrome (syndrome meaning in their heads). Results show that 51 of our study participants understood their experiences as both impostorism and racism, as some realized that racism created the conditions for being racially positioned as an impostor. We problematize impostorism peddled by campus administrators as a cover for racism, once again placing onus on students and claiming they have irrational but curable behaviors, while institutional and individual racism in STEM runs rampant by design.

Incorporation of undergraduate learning assistants (LAas) increased students’ sense of belonging in an introductory biology course, promoting engagement, allowing more use of active learning, and reducing feelings of isolation. These findings demonstrate that LAs can contribute to multiple elements of inclusive STEM teaching.

Background Research shows that engineering and computing students who are marginalized by race and/or gender and experience social suffering often wish to challenge social inequities through their vocation, an attribute we refer to as an equity ethic. This study explores how doctoral engineering and computing students develop this attribute even when they do not directly experience social suffering. Purpose/Hypothesis We explored the relationship between (a) doctoral engineering and computing students' experiences with social suffering and their development of an equity ethic and (b) their equity ethic and career interests. Design/Method We present a thematic analysis of the transcripts of in‐depth, semistructured interviews with 18 engineering and computing PhD students, coding for experiences with social suffering, degree of equity ethic, and their career interests. Results Students with an equity ethic who aspired to reduce inequities within their disciplines personally experienced or witnessed social suffering within and outside academia. Students with “high potential” for developing this attribute who aspired to help others with their disciplines acknowledged social suffering. While both those with an equity ethic and those with high potential saw inequities as socially caused, those with an equity ethic reported more impactful experiences with social suffering, resulting in greater empathy and responsibility to respond. Several students described neither altruistic nor social justice concerns (students with low potential) and did not experience social suffering directly or indirectly. Those with an equity ethic or high potential often showed interest in academia. Conclusions Most participants expressed concerns for helping others in their occupations. This result suggests a nascent equity ethic that could be cultivated through intentional programmatic efforts.

This paper analyses the social-psychological processes of social comparison and relative deprivation with regard to race, gender, and their intersections in STEM higher education through the narratives of 33 Black respondents who described their experiences within engineering and computer science doctoral programs. I use social comparison and relative deprivation, a subsidiary theory of social comparison, as guiding theoretical frameworks. Since the intersections of race and gender are salient, I also incorporate an intersectional framework as an analytical tool. Through data derived from semi-structured interviews, I find that, when describing graduate-school experiences, Black engineering and computer science respondents use social comparisons with regard to race, gender, and their intersections to juxtapose their experiences with those of their peers. Participants described feeling relatively deprived due to inequities resulting from racism and/or sexism and primarily felt that STEM privileged students that were Asian men. Nevertheless, Black men described downward social comparisons with their Black female counterparts, recognizing the sexist culture of STEM. Overall, however, social comparison processes led Black respondents to identify inequities within their Ph.D. programs in engineering and computer science that made them feel as though STEM was not intended for them, but, rather, for their Asian and white male peers who are positioned as belonging.