2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This work in progress paper outlines the evaluation of a self-advocacy program for historically marginalized graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) at a minority serving institution. Self-advocacy originates from the American Counseling Association (ACA) and the Learning Disabilities (LD) communities for effective counseling that promotes academic success and is based on a social justice framework. The underlying principle of self-advocacy is that supporting the agency and knowledge development of students supports moving beyond retention of students through critical transitions to their long term participation in their educational learning, such as post-secondary education in STEM. The pillars of the self-advocacy program are centered on (i) Empowerment, (ii) Promoting self-awareness and (iii) Social Justice and programming in [Name] is aligned and repeated along these three pillars. The current professional development program is in its third year of implementation and to date twenty-seven students have participated in the program.
The research aim of this project is to study whether developing skills in self-advocacy of historically minoritized graduate students will support their academic success. Herein, we present the results of the evaluation of the program through a student survey and focus group. The student survey and focus group questions were designed to measure student knowledge, skills and attributes that are expected to be impacted through self-advocacy learning. For example, these may include developing a sense of belonging in their professional community, instilling a sense of agency in their decisions, and also learning about policies to advocate for themselves. The evaluation will serve to identify which programmatic elements the students find most beneficial, which can potentially be institutionalized and expanded more broadly to other institutions or groups that support graduate students in STEM.