2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In the past several decades, Engineering and STEM programs have seen an influx of initiatives run for and by women* to support the recruitment, retention, sense-of-belonging and success for women in STEM. One such program at R1 Northeastern University focuses on transforming traditionally masculinist maker spaces by centering the priorities, values, needs, and projects of women and marginalized engineers. Despite the need for and successes of this program (and others like it), they enter into a complex political moment: as women fight for support and space in traditionally male industries, men push back; as women carve out space for gender equality, the need for racial equality also looms large.

In this paper, we offer a case study of how to lead through this kind of complex situation through a coalitional approach to interventions. Drawing on Yin’s approach to case study and a participatory action research frame, we ask, “How can leaders quickly and ethically respond to pushback that threatens to do harm against marginalized and vulnerable student groups? And, further, how do we also anticipate the imperfection of emergent strategies?

Our case study centers on the development of an intervention, developed coalitionally, when a women’s STEM group faced backlash against their missions. By situating the case study within two frames (coalitional responses and intersectionality) we articulate the problems facing the women’s group, the coalitions required to respond to these problems, and the imperfection of our interventions from an intersectional standpoint.