BackgroundTo address social disparities and generate an innovative workforce, engineering higher education should provide learning environments that benefit students from all backgrounds. However, because engineering programs are not enrolling or retaining women of color at demographic parity, a better understanding of these students' experiences is needed to develop effective interventions.PurposeThis study analyzes research on women of color in undergraduate engineering education to determine what influences their experiences, participation, and advancement. We identify challenges to and strategies for persistence and present recommendations for engineering institutions to create interventions that support women of color and mitigate institutional inequities.Scope/MethodUsing the snowballing method, we identified 65 empirical studies published between 1999 and 2015 that met the criteria for this review. These studies represented qualitative, mixed‐methods, and quantitative methodologies from various fields. We conducted a systematic thematic synthesis, informed by frames of intersectionality, critical race theory, and community cultural wealth.ConclusionsWomen of color use navigational strategies to address the social pain of race and gender inequity in engineering education. Institutions should take responsibility for generating a sense of belonging for women of color and provide social and structural supports that increase self‐efficacy, address social pain, and improve retention.

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This paper synthesizes 20 years (1999–2019) of empirical research on women of color (WOC) in computing and tech graduate education. Using complementary theoretical frameworks of social pain and community cultural wealth (CCW), we identify factors in the research literature that affect WOC’s experiences, participation, success, and persistence. This qualitative meta-synthesis employed systematic literature search and selection methods, a hybrid approach to coding and thematic analysis. Findings include the ways in which social pain from isolation, exclusion, and hostility from peers and faculty negatively affected WOC’s experiences in their graduate programs. Often, WOC’s motivation to persist and succeed in computing came from key social actors, such as mentors and families, and from individual and social strategies, such as seeking counterspaces, that leveraged their CCW. This meta-synthesis contributes to the knowledge base about the mechanisms that support and hinder the persistence of WOC in computing graduate programs and provides recommendations for institutions and for further research.

This paper focuses on the undergraduate experiences in computer sciences (CS) disciplines of eight Native women and two-spirit undergraduates and how their values and experiences around the communal goal of giving back enable them to persist in computing. The paper draws from a one-year study that included participants across the U.S.A from predominantly White institutions, Native serving institutions, and tribal colleges. Utilizing the decolonizing and participant-centered methods of photo elicitation, our interviews used photographs taken by participants as starting points for conversations. This method resulted in deep understandings of participants’ experiences of the supports and barriers in their CS programs, and of the importance of giving back for persistence. We adapt Page-Reeves and colleagues’ 2019 framework for giving back and Native students in STEM—particularly the concepts of giving back as a Native value and giving back in the context of CS education—to illuminate the ways in which participants persisted and navigated their identities as Native students and emergent computer scientists. We also introduce a new concept, culturally connected giving back, to describe the ways in which Native undergraduates in computing contributed, or planned to contribute, towards technology sovereignty and cultural preservation. CS, like many STEM fields, is typically viewed as highly individualistic and not aligned with communal goals of helping others. However, Native participants in this study identified computing as having the potential for giving back. They incorporated a broad range of giving back actions into their computing professional identities through teaching, mentoring, serving as role models, creating counterspaces, or preserving their cultures using their computing skills. Through giving back, participants fulfilled a sense of obligation to their communities or counteracted negative stereotypes about Native learners. Beneficiaries of these acts of giving back included Native and other minoritized peers, younger students, home communities, and other Native communities. Importantly, opportunities to give back served as strong motivators to persist in CS in spite of challenges. We discuss the implications of these findings for policy and practice and also explore the implications for how institutions and CS departments can support Native student recruitment, retention, and success.

This article examines the role of giving back in the persistence of women of color (WOC) students in engineering and computer science graduate education. Using the theoretical frame of community cultural wealth (CCW), which facilitated exploring our topic from a strengths-based perspective, we analyzed 16 interviews and four extant texts from two recent projects. This study's research question is: How does engaging in giving-back activities support the persistence of women of color in engineering and computing graduate education? We identified three giving-back activities that motivated WOC to persist: serving as a role model, mentoring others, and creating counterspaces. Activities connect to multiple types of CCW. We also recommend that institutions of higher education interested in retaining WOC in their engineering and computer science graduate programs should integrate giving-back activities into their curriculum offerings.