“I felt like my voice literally did not matter”—Recognition and engineering identity experiences of Black undergraduate women in biomedical engineering

Abstract Background Despite substantial investments and initiatives, the field of engineering education continues to face challenges related to increasing the participation and retention of Black women in engineering. Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the experience of engineering identity recognition (and misrecognition) of biomedical engineering students that identify as Black women through engineering identity and recognition frameworks. Design Data were collected through semi‐structured interviews with 13 biomedical engineering students who identify as Black women from a R1 undergraduate engineering program in the Southeastern United States. The methodology consisted of a social constructivist perspective combining a phenomenological approach with a deductive coding scheme. Results Our study contributes three findings to understanding the recognition experience of Black women studying biomedical engineering: (1) Experiencing a lack of recognition and misrecognition within the classroom and campus environments; (2) Negative stereotypes about Black culture create barriers to engineering recognition; and (3) Black women in undergraduate biomedical engineering programs locate recognition in other spaces. Conclusion The findings of this research contribute to the limited research exploring the experience of undergraduate bioengineering students who identify as Black women. Through this research, scholars, academic leadership, faculty, and policy makers can better understand how engineering identity recognition is shaped, hindered, and nurtured within this student population.