Research Support Funds Grant 2022

Those representing marginalized identities and communities—particularly race, ethnicity, home language, and dis/ability—are underrepresented in all areas of STEM (Booksh & Madsen, 2018; Cannady et al., 2014; Metcalf, 2010). Rather than treating this as a “leaky pipeline” problem, this research project seeks to document the experiences, perspectives, and wisdom of community members to identify the possibilities for third spaces (Bhabha, 2012; Brown et al., 2016; Gutierrez et al., 1999; Tan & Barton, 2016) for the intentional development of STEM identities that honor and center marginalized identities and communities. The data collection process is through an emancipatory design based research approach (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016; Cumbo & Selwyn, 2022; Melendez et al., 2018) that will construct a series of adapted conjecture maps (Bar-El & Worsley, 2021; Sandoval, 2014), providing a comprehensive guide for building scaffolding and negotiating tensions in terms of STEM and Careers, Classrooms, Culture, and Liberation, our areas of focus. This research will directly inform the development of two grant proposals through the National Science Foundation (NSF): a Racial Equity proposal and a Smart and Connected Communities proposal.