Research Initiation: A Study on the Intersection of Race and Gender on Leadership Formation of Engineering Students

发展本科工程专业学生的领导技能是当今技术行业成功职业生涯的关键。随着科技公司日益成为全球性企业，领导层的多元化和包容性对于它们的长期成功也至关重要。然而，如何实现这种更大的领导多样性继续证明在工程教育和行业的挑战。这项研究将作为一项基础研究，探讨身份如何塑造不同人口的本科工程专业学生的领导信念。还将研究身份的影响，如种族和性别，沿着身份的交叉对学生信仰的影响。其目的是确定这些因素，并创建一个模型，这些因素告知学生如何看待领导者，领导能力和学生自己的领导能力。这一映射的结果将有助于研究和教育界的努力，培养一个多元化的工程师社区作为行业领导者，通过创建一个基础模型的因素，影响学生的领导能力的信念。这个项目的最终目标是创造新的教育方法，增加学生的信念，他们可以成为领导者。 交叉性理论，在这项研究中使用，是基于这样一个前提，即个人有多重身份和这些身份的交叉塑造个人的经验。它还利用了自我效能，一个人相信他们能够实现既定目标。因此，研究的目的之一是通过从不同的本科工程专业学生中招募学生来包括广泛的身份。这将有助于探讨学生的领导自我效能感，并阐明身份的交叉性，即种族和性别，如何影响这种自我效能感。自我效能感的强弱与个体在克服挑战实现既定目标的过程中对成功目标的持续追求密切相关。本研究旨在确定学生对领导者、领导力以及他们作为领导者的能力的信念，同时确定他们身份的交叉性如何影响这些信念。虽然有一个单一的身份，如种族/民族或性别，对工程形成或领导力发展的影响的研究很强的身体，身份的交叉点的细微差别对工程专业学生的领导力形成仍然是一个显着的知识差距。这一差距影响了工程师多元化社区的长期保留和推广，以及他们在行业中的领导地位。本研究采用质性研究的方法，对工科大学生的领导自我效能感进行分析。学生将接受采访，他们的领导信念和定性分析将使用恒定的比较方法进行。结果将被用来创建一个条件矩阵的本科工程专业学生的领导自我效能感，其中身份和身份的交集是集成的。最后，根据分析结果，提出了领导自我效能感的模型和影响因素。

Development of leadership skills by undergraduate engineering students is a key to successful careers in today's technology industries. Increasing diversity and inclusion in leadership is also critical for long-term success of technology companies as they increasingly become global enterprises. Yet, how to achieve this greater diversity of leadership continues to prove challenging in both engineering education and industry. This research will serve as a foundational study that explores how identity shapes the leadership beliefs of a diverse population of undergraduate engineering students. The influence of identity, such as race and gender, along with the effects of the intersection of identities on students' beliefs will also be studied. The aim is to identify the factors and create a model of these factors informing how students view leaders, leadership, and the student's own ability to lead. The results of this mapping will contribute to the research and education communities' efforts to train a diverse community of engineers as leaders in industry by creating a foundation model of factors that affect beliefs about students' leadership skills. The ultimate goal of this project is to create new educational approaches for increasing students' belief that they can be leaders. Intersectionality theory, used in this study, is based on the premise that individuals have multiple identities and that the intersection of these identities shape an individual's experiences. It also makes use of self-efficacy, the belief a person has that they are able to achieve a defined goal. Thus, one of the research aims is to include a broad range of identities by recruiting from a diverse pool of undergraduate engineering students. This will make it possible to probe students' leadership self-efficacy and elucidate how intersectionality of identities, namely race and gender, affects this self-efficacy. The strength of an individual's self-efficacy has been shown to strongly correlate with the sustained pursuit by an individual to successfully achieve their defined goal, while overcoming challenges to achieve it. The proposed research aims to identify students' beliefs about leaders, leadership, and their own abilities as leaders, while identifying how the intersectionality of their identities affects these beliefs. While there is a strong body of research on the impact a single identity, such as race/ethnicity or gender, has on engineering formation or leadership development, the nuances of the intersection of identities on leadership formation of engineering students still remains a significant gap in knowledge. This gap impacts the long-term retention and promotion of a diverse community of engineers and their ascension to leadership roles in industry. The research is structured as a qualitative study to analyze the leadership self-efficacy of engineering undergraduate students. Students will be interviewed on their leadership beliefs and a qualitative analysis will be performed using the constant comparative method. The results will be used to create a conditional matrix of leadership self-efficacy of undergraduate engineering students, where identities and intersection of identities are integrated. Finally, a model of leadership self-efficacy and factors that affect this self-efficacy will be developed from the analysis results.