https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0172-3361
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Abstract
This paper draws on data from the National Science Foundation (NSF) ADVANCE-funded LATTICE program (Launching Academics on the Tenure-Track: an Intentional Community in Engineering) to examine how a diverse group of women worked across social and professional identities to support early-career women in academic engineering. We used ethnography to elucidate the social dynamics and power relations involved in forming a coherent group identity for the LATTICE leadership team, and the boundaries we negotiated in running the LATTICE program. We identify the processes and behaviors through which we made boundaries between members salient yet porous to build a coherent community across various dimensions of difference. We offer three actionable strategies that impact change agents’ engagement and the group’s coherence across multiple dimensions of difference: (1) intentionally creating a socio-emotional culture in our group, one that spans across group members’ personal and professional identities; (2) validating other group members’ perspectives, and (3) striving to build consensus using storytelling. These strategies of the LATTICE leadership team provide guidelines for others who work across intersecting dimensions of difference.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Corbett and Hill, Solving the Equation; and Ong, Smith, and Ko, “Counterspaces for Women of Color in STEM Higher Education.”
2 Tao and Leggon, “African American Women in Engineering”; Ong, Jaumot-Pascual, and Ko, “Research Literature on Women of Color”; Blackburn, “Status of Women in STEM in Higher Education”; and Faulkner, “Doing Gender in Engineering.”
3 Borrego, “Discipline-Based Views of Collaboration”; Isler et al., “Defining the Flow”; and Kellam et al., “The POWER Special Session.”
4 Parker and Hackett, “Hot Spots and Hot Moments in Scientific Collaboration,” 22.
5 Frickel and Gross, “A General Theory of Scientific/Intellectual Movements,” 206.
6 Gusterson, “Studying Up Revisited,” 116; Hannerz, “Being There … and There … ”
7 Horner-Devine et al., “Beyond Traditional Scientific Training.”
8 Margherio et al., “Connecting Counterspaces”; Margherio et al., “Learning to Thrive”; and Yen et al., “Diversity and Inclusion Begin with Trust.”
9 Grant, Decuir-Gunby, and Smith, “Advance Peer Mentoring Summits.”
10 Scheper-Hughes and Lock, “The Mindful Body”; Parker and Hackett, “Hot Spots and Hot Moments in Scientific Collaboration”; and Barker, Garvin-Doxas, and Roberts, “What Can Computer Science Learn.”
11 Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 263.
12 Scheper-Hughes and Lock, “The Mindful Body.”
13 Parker and Hackett, “Hot Spots and Hot Moments in Scientific Collaboration”; Frickel and Gross, “A General Theory of Scientific/Intellectual Movements,” 206; Mansilla, Lamont, and Sato, “Shared Cognitive–Emotional–Intellectual Platforms”; Kuhn and Wolpe, Feminism and Materialism; Denzin, Interpretive Ethnography.
14 Parker and Hackett, “Hot Spots and Hot Moments in Scientific Collaboration.”
15 Ibid., 24.
16 Ibid.
17 Dace, Unlikely Allies in the Academy.
18 Moradi and Grzanka, “Using Intersectionality Responsibly.”
19 Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall, “Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies”; Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins”; and Metcalf, Russell, and Hill, “Broadening the Science of Broadening Participation.”
20 Metcalf, Russell, and Hill, “Broadening the Science of Broadening Participation.”
21 Ibid., 582.
22 Taylor, From # Blacklivesmatter to Black Liberation.
23 Ong, Smith, and Ko, “Counterspaces for Women of Color in STEM Higher Education.”
24 Collins, Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory.
25 Collins, Black Feminist Thought.
26 Ibid.
27 Metcalf, Russell, and Hill, “Broadening the Science of Broadening Participation;” Ong, Smith, and Ko, “Counterspaces for Women of Color in STEM Higher Education”; Corneille et al., “Barriers to the Advancement of Women of Color Faculty in STEM.”
28 Grzanka, “Intersectionality: Foundations and Frontiers.”
29 Britton and Logan, “Gendered Organizations.”
30 Collins, “Intersectionality’s Definitional Dilemmas.”
31 Spradley, The Ethnographic Interview; and Spradley, Participant Observation.
32 Madison, Critical Ethnography.
33 BIllies et al., “Participatory Action Research.”
34 Denzin, Interpretive Ethnography.
35 Denzin, Interpretive Ethnography; and Brown and Strega, Research as Resistance.
36 Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall, “Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies”; Ong, Smith, and Ko, “Counterspaces for Women of Color in STEM Higher Education.”
37 McClaurin, Black Feminist Anthropology.
38 Grande, “Red Pedagogy;” and McClaurin, Black Feminist Anthropology.
39 Denzin, Interpretive Ethnography.
40 Billies et al., “Participatory Action Research,” 280.
41 Toyosaki et al., “Community Autoethnography,” 58.
42 Maxwell, Qualitative Research Design; Merriam, Qualitative Research.
43 Merriam, Qualitative Research; Mohan, “Not So Distant, Not So Strange.”
44 Pawley, “Learning from Small Numbers”; Slaton and Pawley, “The Power and Politics of Engineering Education Research Design.”
45 Bickford and Nisker, “Tensions between Anonymity and Thick Description”; and Pawley, “Learning from Small Numbers.”
46 Bickford and Nisker, “Tensions between Anonymity and Thick Description.”
47 Puig de la Bellacasa, “Matters of Care in Technoscience.”
48 Combahee River Collective, “The Combahee River Collective Statement.”
49 Loving, Loving Leadership.
50 Daniell, Every other Thursday.
51 Collins, Black Feminist Thought.
52 Ong et al., “Inside the Double Bind.”
53 Carrigan and Bardini, “Majorism”; Cech, “Ideological Wage Inequalities.”
54 Mattingly, “Acted Narratives.”
55 Carrigan and Bardini, “Majorism”; Yen et al., “Diversity and Inclusion Begin with Trust.”