Drs. Meseret Hailu and Brooke Coley from Arizona State University presented last December a session entitled “An exploratory investigation of the experiences of Black immigrant women in undergraduate STEM” as part of the SABER Diversity and Inclusion Efforts. The title caught my attention because I haven’t thought about Black immigrants and their challenges in STEM as much as I should have. I’ve been thinking about Mexican and Latinx immigration a lot this past year and need to be aware of Black immigrants too! Coley began the session with a land acknowledgment and data on immigrants in postsecondary education. It was interesting to see second and third generation data on immigrants in higher education and the representation of Black, Asian, and Latinx immigrants. A critical discourse analysis at a large public university interrogated policy documents from the university and found that “black immigrant women are not explicitly mentioned in policy documents” and that STEM was suffering from underrepresentation (instead of framing it as marginalized student groups were suffering from underrepresentation). The critical discourse analysis led to a study that “seeks to use case studies to better understand how Black immigrant women use their cultural epistemologies to attain undergraduate degrees in engineering” as mentioned by Coley. The main research questions were how do Black women describe their experiences in engineering and what strategies were used by first and second generation Black immigrant women to persist in undergraduate engineering programs. The lens of intersectionality and critical race feminism were used as well as transnationalism to perform a qualitative case study approach using interviews. Textual coding was used in three rounds to identify key words and phrases for a code book and then applying the codes in a third round or transcript reviews. I appreciate how Coley spent some time describing anonymity and the research team positionality. I’ve been reading a series of qualitative studies (even though I publicly say that I run away from qualitative studies!) and haven’t seen a written discussion about anonymity and research team positionality in educational studies. I’m going to bring this up and try to remember for future studies. The participant demographics that Coley reviewed showed the diversity of the samples, with immigrants from Jamaica, Ethiopia, Somalia, Nigeria… and first and second generation immigrants. They were all undergraduate women from a broad range of majors (mostly engineering). Hailu then explained the findings and emphasized focusing on the intersecting identities and sources of academic and professional support. Interestingly, Hailu mentioned that participants were “aware of their social positioning based on their race, gender, and immigrant identity…” but not a particular attachment to another country. Accents were seen as markers for some participants. Organizations, student groups, programs like TRIO and lab-based experienced helped those surveyed find sources of academic support. Hailu mentioned that students highlighted financial pressures, lack of mentorship, and lack of space for finding community as areas for structural changes. One student interviewed mentioned promoting structural change through recruitment at the high school level and another having a mentoring program. While the student population surveyed offered suggestions, Hailu mentioned that change should be through institutional support. Hailu had a thought-provoking graphic of the implication for research of this work: studying identity & structures leads to resisting dominant narratives, and embracing innovation. The post presentation questions and answers led to discussions about the intersectionality of race and gender in how Black immigrant women interacted with faculty for support. Some of the women shared that they wanted to feel “visible” even though they didn’t have the privilege that other peers may have had. One question that I really thought was fantastic was about how funding for US citizens may have affected Black immigrant female students. Hailu mentioned that some participants were US citizens and making higher education more affordable would benefit them. Coley uses VR as a tool to create modules with scenarios that were created from case studies of actual Black women and are aimed for faculty to help them gain empathy. It is sad that we “need” tools like this to force people to feel what students are experiencing, yet the use of the case studies and VR is awesome. Coley and Hailu discussed how the pandemic made some spaces for students to such as minority engineering program spaces inaccessible. Hailu was struck by how aware those who took part in the study were that they are facing challenges for being immigrants and still hopeful and pragmatic.
