2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

“Tricks of the Trade”: Sharing the Experiences of Queer and Trans Graduate Students

Presented at Student Division Technical Session 1: Student Experiences and Support

Engineering, STEM, and academia on the whole have taken strides towards diversity, equity, and inclusion in the past decade. While progress has been made there is still ways to go. This “Tricks of the Trade” research paper describes a student-led panel that examined the experiences of queer academics and graduate students within several STEM fields in a large R1 institution in the Mid-Atlantic. The panel was intended to be a space for STEM graduate students in the 2SLGBTQIA community to share with administrators, faculty, and staff their experiences as well as the experiences of fellow graduate students in the college/institution. The panelists discussed whether they have faced issues navigating multiple identities within academic spaces. To make queer and trans students feel more welcome, they also discussed the changes that would make them feel more welcome and included within academia and their department(s) (cultural and/or infrastructural changes). Panelists also provided advice and recommendations to future queer and trans graduate students. The panel received overwhelmingly positive feedback, and the audience expressed their willingness and enthusiasm to learn and support queer and trans graduate students. Overall, the lessons learned from the Queer and Trans Graduate Students Panel are as follows:
• Provided an opportunity to inform about the specific obstacles that many queer and trans students experience in graduate education.
• Contributed to the knowledge of designing, facilitating, and conducting a student experiences panel that helps administrators and educators realize connections between student experiences/identities and different aspects of the academic environment.
• Provided suggestions to improve the experiences of queer and trans graduate students in STEM.

Authors

Laurel Lynn ONeill http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9476-6300 Penn State University [biography]

Laurel is a graduate student in electrical engineering with a dual focus on engineering education and environmental sensing. Laurel is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. Past researh has included detection of fertilizers in water using deep UV Raman spectroscop, and measurement of the temperature of the water column using variations in the Raman spectrum
Luis Delgado Jr. Penn State [biography]

Luis R. Delgado Jr. is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Pennsylvania State University. He has a bachelor of science in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Texas at El Paso and earned a master of science degree in Civil Engineering with a minor in Public Policy from Penn State. Along with his role as a Ph.D., he is also a graduate research assistant at the Leonhard Center for Enhancement of Engineering Education at Penn State. His research interests are engineering education, diversity, equity, inclusion, and retention of underrepresented minority groups. Luis will research how diverse human talents contribute to our profession's social and global relevance.
Dr. Stephanie Cutler Penn State University [biography]

Dr. Stephanie Cutler has degrees in Mechanical Engineering, Industrial and Systems Engineering, and a PhD in Engineering Education from Virginia Tech. She is an Associate Research Professor and the Director of Assessment and Instructional Support in the Leonhard Center at Penn State.
Dr. Sarah E Zappe Penn State University [biography]

Dr. Sarah Zappe is Director of the Leonhard Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Education and Assistant Dean of Teaching and Learning at Penn State. She holds a doctoral degree in educational psychology emphasizing applied measurement.

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