Research Initiation: Understanding the Conditions for Inclusive Spaces for LGBTQ Engineering Students

该项目旨在了解帮助女同性恋，男同性恋，双性恋，变性人和质疑（LGBTQ）工程学生在他们的教育机构感到舒适的条件。工程学校对LGBTQ人群的不友好是出了名的，这对LGBTQ学生和社会来说都是代价高昂的。作为一名LGBTQ工程师（无论是公开的还是秘密的）的情感代价是如此之大，以至于它有可能将LGBTQ工程师赶出这个领域。他们离开工程的原因与资格无关，只会使该领域更加同质化，因此缺乏创造力，创新和冒险，同时减少了在工程领域已经代表性不足的人口。虽然研究人员了解工程文化的习俗，可以损害非异性恋的工程专业学生和工程师，他们仍然知道很少工程文化如何支持这些相同的工程师。该项目建立在一个工程机构进行的校园气候调查的基础上，该机构拥有一批公开的LGBTQ工程专业学生。 在访谈和其他研究方法中，研究团队正在确定最具包容性和支持性的空间的要素，以便开发将这些要素扩展到工程教室和其他正式学习体验的方法。 为了了解支持女同性恋，男同性恋，双性恋，变性人和质疑（LGBTQ）工程专业学生的条件，并研究他们如何准备学生领导积极的变化，人文主义者和工程师的跨学科团队正在专业发展合作，学习21世纪心理理论的理论基础，重点是认知如何与身体体验联系在一起。与许多将个人与工程内容和方法分开的工程文化相反，这个团队以知识与生活经验一样复杂的假设开始，工程师既有精神又有身体，个人又有联系，自由又有决心。 从2016年校园气候调查的最新数据开始，这项研究通过对伍斯特理工学院（Worcester Polytechnic Institute）LGBTQ工程专业学生的个人和焦点小组访谈，更深入地探索了这些发现，伍斯特理工学院是一所中等规模的工程学院，拥有相对大量的公开LGBTQ学生。 这些访谈有助于研究团队详细了解LGBTQ工程专业学生的经验，探讨传统或基于项目的工程课程是否以及如何有助于LGBTQ学生的经验，并为其他学校开发模型，以在课堂和项目中采用。研究团队正在确定那些最有利于LGBTQ工程师成长，成功和自信的实践和空间，以及了解他们的专业形成（沿着许多轴，包括性身份）如何发生。在确定那些最支持LGBTQ工程专业学生的经验，机会和实践时，该研究还确定了有助于发展情商和跨文化敏感性和沟通的相同经验，这些经验将支持所有工程师，包括但不限于其他代表性不足的人群。利用通用设计原则，该项目正在试行教育干预措施，以支持工程教育中各种形式的多样性。

This project aims to understand the conditions that help lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) engineering students feel comfortable in their educational institutions. Engineering schools are notoriously inhospitable to LGBTQ people, with costly results for LGBTQ students and society. The emotional toll of being an LGBTQ engineer (either open or closeted) is so great that it threatens to drive LGBTQ engineers out of the field. Their departure from engineering for reasons that have nothing to do with qualification only makes the field more homogenous and therefore less creative, innovative, and risk-taking, at the same time diminishing a population that is already underrepresented in engineering. While researchers understand the conventions of engineering culture that can damage non-heterosexual engineering students and engineers, they still know very little about how engineering cultures can support these same engineers. This project builds on a campus climate survey conducted at an engineering institution with a notable population of openly LGBTQ engineering students. In interviews and other research methods, the research team is identifying the elements of the most inclusive and supportive spaces in order to develop ways to extend these elements into engineering classrooms and other formal learning experiences. To understand the conditions that support lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) engineering students and to examine how they prepare students to lead positive change, an interdisciplinary team of humanists and engineers are collaborating in professional development to learn the theoretical foundations of 21st-century theories of mind, focusing on how cognition is tied to bodily experience. In contrast to much engineering culture that separates the personal from engineering content and methods, this team begins with the assumption that knowledge is as complex as lived experience, with engineers being both mental and physical, individual and connected, free and determined. Beginning with recent data from a 2016 campus climate survey, this study is exploring the findings more deeply through individual and focus group interviews with LGBTQ engineering students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, a medium-sized engineering college with a relatively large number of openly LGBTQ students. These interviews are helping the research team learn in some detail about the experiences of LGBTQ engineering students, probing whether and how a traditional or project-based engineering curriculum can contribute to LGBTQ students' experiences and developing models for other schools to adopt in classes and projects. The research team is identifying those practices and spaces that are most conducive to the growth, success, and self-confidence of LGBTQ engineers, as well as understanding how their professional formation (along many axes including sexual identity) transpires. In identifying those experiences, opportunities, and practices that are most supportive of LGBTQ engineering students, the research is also identifying the same experiences that help develop the emotional intelligence and cross-cultural sensitivity and communication that will support all engineers, including but not exclusively other underrepresented populations. Using the principle of universal design, this project is piloting educational interventions to support all forms of diversity in engineering education.