2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Understanding the Experiences of Black Women in STEM: A Framework for Interruption (Research)

Presented at Minorities in Engineering Division(MIND) Technical Session 4

Enhanced participation of Black women in science, technology engineering and mathematics (STEM) is of ethical imperative, and empowering individuals who would otherwise not be able to fully engage in STEM increases our national potential to advance science and solve real-world problems. In this paper we share a conceptual framework that seeks to define the “interruptions” experienced by Black women in STEM as they navigate undergraduate STEM programs. Our framework, grounded in Black feminist epistemologies, is informed by two years of data collected from surveys, interviews, focus groups, reflective journals, and audio diaries of forty Black women undergraduates at three institutions of higher education. This framework illuminates the relationship between societal power structures, Black women’s STEM self-concept, and selected coping strategies. Although the framework was originally designed to understand how interruption impacts Black women in STEM, we believe it can be applied in other contexts and has the potential to serve as a guide in answering questions of persistence and retention.

Authors

Tamara Pearson Georgia Institute of Technology [biography]

Tamara Pearson is the Constellations Center for Equity in Computing Deputy Director and Senior Director of Research and Programs at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). Her work focuses on disrupting the root causes for the inequitable access, participation, and success of historically marginalized communities in computing. Dr. Pearson is the former inaugural Director of the Center of Excellence for Minority Women in STEM at Spelman College. In her two years in that role, she was successful in raising significant public and private funds, including a $5 million grant from Google to develop a data hub highlighting the unique needs and challenges of Black women in STEM, the largest ever grant of this kind from Google, and a $4.2 million Racial Equity in STEM Education grant from the National Science Foundation focused on the undergraduate of experiences of Black women in STEM. Prior to her work at Spelman, she served as Associate Director of School and Community Engagement at the Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing (CEISMC) at Georgia Tech, where she led K-12 school and district partnerships. Dr. Pearson holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Spelman College, with a minor in Computer Science, and an MEd and PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in Educational Technology from the University of Florida.
Dr. Pamela M Leggett-Robinson http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2674-3286 PLR Consulting, Inc. [biography]

Pamela Leggett-Robinson is the CEO and Executive Director for PLR Consulting in Atlanta, GA. PLR Consulting is a boutique Program Development, Management, and Evaluation firm that works with organizations and institutions that seeks to address multi-faceted obstacles confronting both historically and presently marginalized groups in STEM environments as well as optimize current STEM programs through management and evaluation. Dr. Leggett-Robinson has more than 15 years of higher education experience which includes STEM academic and student success/support programming, strategic planning, data analytics, and program evaluation. As a PI, she has garnered funds in excess of $3 million dollars from both NIH and NSF for broadening participation in STEM Undergraduate Education and as an Evaluator has worked on large projects with NSF (Big Data, BioGraph), Google CS-ER, and DOD STEM Student Success. Her distinguished record of STEM programmatic success (at HBCUs and PWIs) is well documented in publications and presentations. Dr. Leggett-Robinson’s latest publications, ”Demystifying Promotion & Tenure: A resource for Black Women” and “Overcoming Barriers for Women of Color in STEM” are resources to assist Black women along their STEM journey. She currently distributes a bi-monthly Overcoming Barriers Newsletter to Women of Color STEM faculty. Dr. Leggett-Robinson holds a Ph.D. in Physical Organic Chemistry from Georgia State University and is a Certified Associate of Project Management.
Dr. Kathaleena Edward Monds Albany State University [biography]

Dr. Monds is a tenured, full professor of Management Information Systems and Founding Director of the Center for Educational Opportunity (CEO) at Albany State University. The CEO was launched during the 2017-2018 academic year as a five-year, $3.M grant-funded effort funded by TMCF and provides support for research on educational innovations, opportunities, access, and models germane to students living in fragile communities. Since that time, additional grants have been secured in 2022 to sustain the Center’s efforts from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in partnership with the Georgia Department of Community Affairs for the HUD Housing and Financial Literacy Grant; the National Science Foundation (NSF)-Racial Equity in STEM for the project ‘Understanding Persistence through the Lens of Interruption: A Framework for Transformation (UPLIFT)’; and a mini-grant from the Southeast Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) Business Growth Hub, Accelerate Your Program to launch “Think Like a GirlPreneur” for the ASU campus and community. She formerly served as Co-Director of the Center for Economic Education/Small and Minority Entrepreneurship from 2007-2017 to improve economic and entrepreneurship education to underserved communities where she hosted and led workshops for K-12 teachers to develop the economic and entrepreneurial way of thinking and deploy strategies for teaching economics. Dr. Monds is a graduate of two nationally recognized professional development programs - Babson College’s Symposium for Entrepreneurship Educators (SEE) and Oklahoma State University’s Experiential Entrepreneurship Program. She is the former Interim Dean of the College of Business at Albany State University and served three years as Chair, Department of Accounting, Information Systems, and Marketing at the same university. Her research interests include design thinking, homeschooling, and mentoring girls in STEM.
Monica Stephens Cooley Spelman College [biography]

Dr. Monica Stephens is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Spelman College.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

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For those interested in:

Broadening Participation in Engineering and Engineering Technology
gender
race/ethnicity
undergraduate