2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The purpose of this Work-in-Progress research paper is to explore how LGBTQ STEM students experience the intersection and integration of their sexual and gender identities with their STEM discipline-based identities. LGBTQ students in STEM fields face significant barriers to full, authentic participation within their disciplines. Unsupportive environments, harmful biases, and a lack of understanding of their experiences all serve as barriers, which then negatively affect students' sense of belonging and persistence in STEM. To address these issues, it is essential to foster inclusive environments that support the professional role identity formation of LGBTQ students.
The theoretical framework guiding this study combines engineering identity and possible selves to explore how LGBTQ STEM students navigate their discipline-based identities. Engineering identity examines how students come to see themselves as engineers, shaped by recognition, competence, and performance, which we broaden to encompass any STEM field. The concept of possible selves reveals what participants envision they are working toward as they construct their discipline-based identities, both in terms of what they desire for and fear about that future. In this sense, we explore how students’ science and engineering identities are informed by their current experiences and their anticipated futures.
This study achieves its purpose through a narrative inquiry approach to capture key events through which participants make meaning of their emerging identities. LGBTQ undergraduate students in STEM majors were recruited for this study, and, to date, eight students have participated in their first interview, including 4 in engineering. We plan to recruit approximately 40 participants to participate in two interviews, the first focused on their experience of science or engineering identity and the second on their future possible selves in STEM.
Among the interviews we have completed so far, participants described an intrinsic interest in their STEM fields that started prior to college. As they engaged with their majors in college, their confidence in their ability to succeed grew which bolstered their science and engineering identities—though a few found their confidence undermined through comparison with their peers’ academic performance. Students did not see an inherent conflict with being LGBTQ in STEM, but they did indicate that unwelcoming climates around LGBTQ acceptance made being LGBTQ feel incompatible with being in STEM. One bisexual participant speculated others might not recognize them as LGBTQ without self-disclosure, and all participants thought increased LGBTQ representation in their fields would improve their experiences.
Identity is a useful lens for understanding individuals’ persistence in a STEM career as it reflects their underlying motivation to pursue their academic and professional goals. STEM and LGBTQ identities do not seem to conflict with each other in some intrinsic way but concerns about the LGBTQ climate in STEM may undermine STEM identity by eroding at one’s perception of belonging within a particular academic or professional community. LGBTQ awareness coupled with increased visible representation of LGBTQ people in STEM could go a long way to creating working and learning environments that enable the contributions of people of all sexual and gender identities.