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

最近一项关于女同性恋、男同性恋、双性恋、变性人和酷儿（LGBTQ）群体在工程领域经历的研究表明，对学生和专业人士来说，环境可能是不友好的（或“寒冷”）。该项目旨在增加LGBTQ学生和工程专业人员的包容性。它将为促进包容和研究如何使教职员工成为变革推动者的新方法提供支持。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策略，并传播这些策略，以便将其扩展到国家层面。这个项目的成功完成将导致在工程环境中实施政策和实践，以增加LGBTQ学生和专业人士的包容和参与。此外，它还将确定虚拟实践社区模型对于解决其他社会问题的有效性。在STEM专业的各个领域，LGBTQ个人都面临着一种寒冷的气候，文化规范和职业意识形态使得很难识别和纠正排斥行为。这种冷淡环境的一个负面后果是，很难在工程专业招募和留住有才华的LGBTQ人士。本项目使用定性研究来产生关于发展实践社区的过程的新知识，以促进LGBTQ在工程中的包容，社区成员如何发展成为变革推动者，以及哪些策略在重塑规范和增加工程部门的LGBTQ包容方面是有效的。通过虚拟实践社区活动的迭代改进和有希望的实践的实施，结果将转化为实践，以促进工程部门对LGBTQ的包容。此外，该研究将成为系统开发和形成完善在线SafeZone课程的基础，为全国的工程专业学生和专业人员提供包容性培训。该项目的影响将从工程领域扩展到更广泛的STEM领域，因为虚拟实践社区的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.