Collaborative Research: A Virtual Community of Practice to Promote LGBTQ Inclusion in Engineering

最近对女同性恋者、男同性恋者、双性恋者、变性人和同性恋者(LGBTQ)在工程学领域的经历的研究表明，对学生和专业人士来说，环境都可能不友好(或者说“冷”)。该项目旨在增加LGBTQ学生和工程专业人员的参与。它将为促进包容性的新方法提供支持，并就如何使教职员工成为变革推动者进行研究。该项目将确定LGBTQ学生和工程专业人员面临的问题，确定并实施创造更友好的工程环境的战略，并传播这些战略，以便将其推广到国家一级。这个项目的成功完成将导致在工程环境中执行政策和做法，以增加LGBTQ学生和专业人员的包容性和参与度。此外，它还将决定虚拟实践社区模式在解决其他社会问题方面的作用。在STEM专业的每个部门，LGBTQ个人都可以找到寒冷的气氛，在那里，文化规范和职业意识形态使识别和纠正排外做法变得困难。这种寒冷环境的一个负面后果是，很难招募和留住有才华的LGBTQ人员进入工程专业。该项目使用定性研究来产生关于以下方面的新知识：开发实践社区以促进LGBTQ纳入工程学，社区成员如何发展为变革推动者，以及在重塑规范和提高工程部门LGBTQ包容性方面有效的战略。将通过反复改进虚拟实践社区活动和实施有前景的做法，将成果转化为实践，以促进将LGBTQ纳入工程部门。此外，这项研究将作为系统开发和形成完善的在线SafeZone课程的基础，该课程将为全国的工程专业学生和专业人员提供包容性培训。该项目的影响将超越工程学的界限，延伸到更广泛的STEM，因为虚拟实践社区成员将包括来自各个STEM领域的成员。

Recent research on the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) individuals in engineering has shown that the climate can be unfriendly (or "chilly") for both students and professionals. This project aims to increase the inclusion of LGBTQ students and professionals in engineering. It will provide support for new approaches to foster inclusion and research on how to enable faculty and staff to become change agents. The project will identify issues faced by LGBTQ students and professionals in engineering, identify and implement strategies to create more welcoming engineering environments, and disseminate those strategies so that they can be expanded to a national level. Successful completion of this project will result in the implementation of policies and practices in engineering environments to increase inclusion and participation of LGBTQ students and professionals. In addition, it will determine the usefulness of a Virtual Community of Practice model for efforts such as this to address other societal issues.A chilly climate for LGBTQ individual can be found in every sector of STEM professions, where cultural norms and professional ideologies make it difficult to recognize and rectify exclusionary practices. One negative consequence of this chilly environment is difficulty in recruiting and retaining talented LGBTQ individuals into the engineering profession. This project uses qualitative research to generate new knowledge about the processes of developing a community of practice to promote LGBTQ inclusion in engineering, how the members of the community develop into change agents, and what strategies are effective in reshaping norms and increasing LGBTQ inclusion in engineering departments. The results will be translated into practice through the iterative refinement of Virtual Community of Practice activities and implementation of promising practices to advance LGBTQ inclusion in engineering departments. In addition, the research will be the basis of systematic development and formative refinement of an online SafeZone course to provide inclusion training to engineering students and professionals nationwide. The impact of this project will extend beyond the boundaries of engineering to STEM more broadly, as the Virtual Community of Practice members will include members from the various STEM fields.