Collaborative Research: Gateway or Gatekeeper: Understanding Why Black Students Choose Engineering Technology or Engineering, and the Implications of this Choice

This project will contribute to the development of a more diverse engineering workforce by highlighting the academic pathways to and through college of a group of degreed and trained workers, Black Engineering Technology (ET) graduates, who are often overlooked in conversations around the stated diversity, equity, and inclusion goals for the Engineering profession. While ET graduates often work alongside engineers and there may be little distinction between their entry-level job descriptions, many encounter barriers to career advancement in the hierarchical engineering field because of their chosen degree path.

In addition, the disproportionately large number of Black students in some engineering technology programs compared to engineering directly impacts the number of Black students who later have the degree credentials often required to enter to the engineering professorate, engineering research careers, and leadership positions in industry. This study will center on the voices, experiences, and knowledge of Black ET students through focus group interviews and surveys in order to gain insight into the factors that led them to their chosen major and their experiences as Black students in ET.

The project will also compare the engineering and ET programs at the collaborating institutions and examine whether there are certain engineering majors that are less accessible than others, and whether Black students are concentrated in some ET majors more than others.

The overarching goal of this work is to contribute to the identification and removal of systemic and structural barriers and racial inequities in ET undergraduate education. The long-term goal is that the findings of the research will be used to inform interventions and policy changes. Investigating the reasons why there is a disproportionately high percentage of Black students in ET compared to engineering will shed light on the complex social terrain that Black students must navigate to combat the structural barriers in education to achieve an undergraduate college degree generally, and an engineering-related degree specifically, with all of the professional benefits a degree confers.

The specific research questions of the project are as follows: 1. What role do high school counselors, college counselors/recruiters, and faculty play in Black students’ choice of ET versus engineering? 2. What are the academic and structural barriers that effect Black students’ admittance to engineering? 3.

What are the structural barriers and affordances that enable or prevent Black students to transfer from ET to engineering (and vice versa) from during an undergraduate program? 4. How do Black ET students perceive their future career opportunities? 5. To what extent do Black ET students identify with the Engineering and/or ET domain and how is this related to contextual salience of stereotype threat and belongingness to the program? 6.

How do students’ perceptions of their experiences in ET and the interpretation of these experiences relate to their self-schemas including their expectations of success, personal, cultural, and professional identities, and their career goals? This project will contribute to efforts to develop a more diverse STEM workforce by examining how these complexities influence student choice of major and suggesting solutions to lessen their impacts.

This collaborative project is funded through the Racial Equity in STEM Education program (EDU Racial Equity). The program supports research and practice projects that investigate how considerations of racial equity factor into the improvement of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and workforce. Awarded projects seek to center the voices, knowledge, and experiences of the individuals, communities, and institutions most impacted by systemic inequities within the STEM enterprise.

This program aligns with NSF’s core value of supporting outstanding researchers and innovative thinkers from across the Nation's diversity of demographic groups, regions, and types of organizations. Programs across EDU contribute funds to the Racial Equity program in recognition of the alignment of its projects with the collective research and development thrusts of the four divisions of the directorate.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.