Oquendo Colón, Nolgie O.

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    Understanding the intersectionality of cultural elements as an influential factor for the development of females’ engineering identity
    (2021-12-09) Oquendo Colón, Nolgie O.; Medina Avilés, Lourdes A.; College of Engineering; Dávila Padilla, Saylisse; Santiago Román, Aidsa I.; Department of Industrial Engineering; Baigés Valentín, Iván
    Access to engineering education for all people regardless of race, gender, or class has been a widely discussed topic in recent decades. Scholars have been examining institutional policies on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and initiatives for recruitment, retention, progression, and success for underrepresented minority groups to face these latent challenges that engineering programs have been dealing with throughout many years. With initiatives and funds dedicated to increase the participation of minority groups in engineering, specifically for women, there is no evidence of improvement. This problem is further aggravated if we look at the plurality of identities that a woman can possess, in addition to her gender, her race and class. This intersectionality of identities represents major challenges for women's access to engineering both in the academic and professional settings. This new reality depicted by intersectionality has led to a change of direction in how the problem should be addressed. Now not only is there an underrepresentation of women in engineering due to their gender, but the multiplicity of identities has made it possible to discover and explore new dimensions of the problem. This problem does not have a solution in one dimension but a solution that is multidimensional and multisectoral. That said, not only this problem should be studied and addressed in higher education institutions, but also, we should impact minorities when they are younger through schools, and family and continue with DEI initiatives during adulthood at the workplace. Seeking to contribute to the exploration of factors that hinder the increase in the representation of females in engineering, this work focuses on understanding whether culture is a factor that influences the females’ engineering identity. Little is known about whether culture as an integral concept influences this type of identity and to shed light on this is the main objective of this research. This research presents a comparative study between the students from two engineering colleges with similar size but significant differences in culture– one whose culture involves a student population that is predominantly white and other that is Hispanic-Serving Institution with higher percentages for recruiting and retaining women in engineering. The overall study is divided in two phases. The first phase has the aim to identify differences in both types of cultures. The second phase is to understand how these differences help or disrupt female students’ engineering identity development while considering intersectionality. This study's theoretical framework is based on the Six-Dimensions of Culture study developed by Hofstede (2011) , the Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction Scale (SDT) (Vansteenkiste, Ryan, & Soenens, 2020), and the Academic Pathway of People Learning Engineering Survey (APPLES) (Sheppard et al., 2010). Machine learning techniques are applied to study the influencing factors along with the concept of intersectionality. This master's thesis provides major contributions in the areas of intersectionality, culture, engineering identity, and overall research methods to study these issues. This work augments the knowledge about intersectionality in the context of the problem addressed along with how it can be analyzed. The results of phase 1 demonstrate that there are cultural differences between both students’ populations as well as in the basic psychological needs: relatedness, competence, and autonomy. Results from phase 2 demonstrate that these differences in cultural characteristics were reflected in the students' engineering identity. Likewise, this work contributes to the understanding of cultural factors about engineering identity and the future development of cultural profiles to identify strengths in our engineering programs. The results from this study can motivate future research efforts that are needed to accomplish DEI for all.