Factors Influencing Researcher Identities in Minority Gender Students in Electrical Engineering

This research full paper explores the intersection of gender and researcher identities in electrical engineering students. Minority gender (i.e. women, transgender, and nonbinary) students make up very little of the electrical and computer engineering higher education population, at both the undergraduate and graduate level. To remain in this field, particularly through graduate school, the establishment of a researcher identity is particularly important for minority students. In an effort to establish how minority gender electrical and computer engineering students at a public, Midwestern R1 institution gain an identity as a researcher, a survey was sent via email to the electrical and computer engineering student body. Additionally, links to the survey were presented at the end of events run by a minority-gender-focused student group in the same department. This research paper describes a survey of 179 students, including 117 undergraduate and 62 graduate students. Within the survey, students were asked to answer the question, “Do you see yourself as a researcher?” using the Likert scale, where 1 was “Strongly disagree”, 2 was “Somewhat disagree”, 3 was “Neither agree nor disagree”, 4 was “Somewhat agree”, and 5 was “Strongly agree”. Students who ranked themselves 3–5 were asked why they identify as a researcher, and those who ranked themselves 1–2 were asked why they didn't identify as a researcher. Their responses were then labeled with common codes, and these codes categorized into relevant themes. Graduate-level minority gender students ranked themselves on average a 3.52, graduate-level cisgender men ranked themselves on average at a 3.7, undergraduate-level minority gender students ranked themselves on average a 2.81, and undergraduate-level cis-gender men ranked themselves on average a 2.54. Minority gender students were found to more often than cisgender men rank themselves in the 3–5 range while writing they did not identify as a researcher. The most common theme found in the students' responses to why they did or did not identify as a researcher was research, primarily through the code of research experience. The second most common theme among minority gender students was applied curiosity; for example, literature review and synthesizing ideas. While for cisgender men applied curiosity tied with personal characteristics for their second most common theme; characteristics include self-identifying some innate capability and working hard. Insights from this paper can influence practice in how to best support students in establishing a researcher identity and improve retention of marginalized students.