2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This EEC CAREER research project, now in its fourth year, has made significant strides in understanding how restrictive policies and institutional practices at Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) impact the engineering trajectories of Latino/a/x students. Guided by Chicana Feminist Epistemologies, the project investigates the lived experiences of Latino/a/x engineering students through a qualitative approach that centers on testimonios, pláticas, and focus groups. These data sources have been invaluable for revealing the systemic barriers that disproportionately affect Latino/a/x students’ ability to thrive and persist in engineering.

One of the primary goals of the project has been to examine how conocimiento—or the process of developing critical awareness and knowledge from lived experiences—emerges for Latino/a/x students as they navigate complex educational pathways. The iterative process of data collection and analysis has highlighted the ways in which students are frequently confronted with exclusionary policies and practices, such as limited access to financial support, inflexible academic pathways, and inadequate mentorship. Such policies often function to restrict students’ ability to fully engage with and benefit from the educational opportunities at HSIs, creating a disconnect between the promise of “servingness” and the reality of students’ experiences. As a result, Latino/a/x students often find themselves in a constant state of navigating, resisting, and re-negotiating their place within engineering programs.

The findings suggest that to genuinely embrace the concept of “servingness” at HSIs, particularly in engineering programs, there must be an intentional effort to identify and reform these restrictive policies that undermine students' academic and professional growth. The data reveal that while many HSIs position themselves as inclusive spaces for Latinx students, institutional policies frequently perpetuate inequities by failing to address students’ unique socio-cultural and academic needs. This study also emphasizes that the current framing of “serving” at many HSIs is limited by a lack of understanding of how intersecting identities (e.g., ethnicity, gender, first-generation status) shape students’ experiences. Consequently, institutional support structures must be redesigned to center the voices, needs, and conocimiento of Latino/a/x students to cultivate truly inclusive engineering pathways.

Moreover, this research contributes to the broader discourse on equity and inclusion by showcasing how culturally responsive frameworks, such as Chicana Feminist Epistemologies, can serve as powerful tools for analyzing the experiences of marginalized groups in STEM. The testimonios collected thus far not only document the barriers faced by Latino/a/x engineering students but also illuminate their resilience, agency, and strategies for success in the face of adversity. The focus groups have provided additional layers of insight into how these students build community, resist deficit narratives, and work collectively to create spaces of belonging within engineering.