Proving Our Worth: HBCUs, STEM Partnerships and the Marginalization of Black Women in Industry Settings

University-industry partnerships (UIPs) in STEM expand opportunities for students and incorporate industry experiences into the academic enterprise. While UIPs have increased, few studies explore marginalized students’ experiences within industry settings. Our study addresses this literature gap with an emphasis on Black women in computing from HBCUs. We utilized the Role Strain and Adaptation Model for Black Women’s STEM Success and phenomenological approaches to explore challenges that many Black women encounter in UIPs—specifically structural inequities at the intersection of race and gender; macroaggressions and imposter syndrome. Implications for practice, research, and policy are discussed while noting increasingly complicated climates for diversity efforts.