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

协作研究：促进 LGBTQ 融入工程的虚拟实践社区

• 批准号: 1748473
• 负责人: Kelly Cross
• 金额: $ 11.41万
• 依托单位: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-01-01 至 2019-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1748473&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Virtual; Community; Practice

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.

最近对工程领域女同性恋、男同性恋、双性恋、跨性别者和酷儿 (LGBTQ) 个体经历的研究表明，气候对于学生和专业人士来说可能都不友好（或“寒冷”）。 该项目旨在提高 LGBTQ 学生和工程专业人士的参与度。它将为促进包容性的新方法提供支持，并为如何使教职员工成为变革推动者的研究提供支持。该项目将确定 LGBTQ 学生和工程专业人士面临的问题，确定并实施创造更受欢迎的工程环境的策略，并传播这些策略，以便将其扩展到全国范围。 该项目的成功完成将导致工程环境中政策和实践的实施，以提高 LGBTQ 学生和专业人士的包容性和参与度。此外，它将确定虚拟实践社区模型对于解决其他社会问题的有用性。在 STEM 职业的每个领域都可以发现 LGBTQ 个体的冷漠氛围，在这些领域，文化规范和职业意识形态使其难以识别和纠正排他性做法。 这种寒冷环境的一个负面后果是难以招募和留住有才华的 LGBTQ 人才进入工程行业。该项目利用定性研究来产生新的知识，涉及发展实践社区以促进 LGBTQ 融入工程的过程、社区成员如何发展成为变革推动者，以及哪些策略可有效重塑规范和增加 LGBTQ 在工程部门的包容性。 通过虚拟实践社区活动的迭代完善和实施有前景的实践，将结果转化为实践，以促进 LGBTQ 融入工程部门。 此外，该研究还将成为在线 SafeZone 课程系统开发和形成性完善的基础，为全国工程专业学生和专业人士提供包容性培训。该项目的影响将超越工程学的界限，更广泛地扩展到 STEM，因为虚拟实践社区成员将包括来自各个 STEM 领域的成员。