Academic climate’s effect on fit for SGM students

Academic climate in the STEM literature refers to both psychological climate (student perceptions of others’ attitudes, behaviors, and practices) and experiential climate (student experiences of discrimination, harassment, and abuse) [36]. Microaggressions are often unrecognized by non-minoritized groups [11], and these experiences can lead to SGM students experiencing poor climate, which can in turn impact how they feel they belong or fit in their program. We use ‘fit’ to refer to how students feel they belong or feel welcomed into their STEM programs [see 32, 34, 35]. We view fit as a systematic characteristic, reflecting their STEM program culture, not students’ own supposed weaknesses or strengths. We interpret fit as nestled within students’ cultural models of education—or how they conceptualize and understand education and the people within the schooling process [37, 38].

Within the STEM microclimate, there can be differing climate zones, or various places in which academic climate and thus fit can differ, such as in departments or labs [29], and students’ feelings of fit may not be uniform across all places in the microclimate. Nadal and colleagues [33] offer a taxonomy of microaggressions against SGM people, including the use of and endorsement of cis-normative and heterosexist language and behaviors and the denial that social and individual prejudice and discrimination against SGM people occurs. In STEM, classroom interactions can be particularly fraught sites of cis-normative language [39]; transgender students have reported faculty refusal to use appropriate pronouns in direct address, which can lead to student disengagement from courses [14].

These findings demonstrating the negative environment in STEM for SGM students are bolstered by several other studies [40–42], such as Bilimoria and Stewart who document that heterosexuality is often assumed by others in STEM [43] or Woodford and colleagues who show how hearing the phrase “That’s so gay” impacted students’ social and physical well-being [44, 45]. STEM departments are suggested to be chilly in comparison to others (such as social sciences) that are warm to SGM students [21, 26, 42, 46]. Differences among STEM fields, such as the life sciences and physical sciences, in biases against SGM students also likely exist given the demonstrated differences between the fields in biases against women [27]. For instance, the hegemonic masculinity culture of engineering has long been documented to affect women [32, 47–49], with work highlighting the importance of hostile experiences related to masculinity for students who were gay men and stereotyped as feminine to a degree that being gay was seen as a barrier to success in engineering [50]. Together, these studies show a general pattern in STEM programs where SGM students tend to experience microaggressions related to sexual and gender identity, causing negative STEM microclimates and likely poor fit.

Social capital: The effect of SGM alters on fit and persistence

The lack of SGM faculty, alters, mentors, and students within STEM fields can additionally contribute to feeling a lack being welcomed or fitting in for SGM students [25]. Thus, we consider how SGM students’ alters affect how they fit into their STEM program. In our work, we rely on Lin’s characterization of social capital, in which he suggests that access to resources comes from ties that link an individual to others with resources [51]. Further, Coleman suggests social capital is a ‘collective’ resource or group asset that results from societal structure [52]. Specifically, social capital is “the norms and networks that enable people to work collectively to mobilize resources and achieve common goals” [53, p. 111].

Most recently, in conceptualizing types of alters, Skvoretz and colleagues describe network-based social capital as emphasizing an individual’s network of social ties, while participatory social capital is accessed by an individual’s participation in organizations that have as part of their mission to support students [32, 54, 55]. Social networks built through both of these types of relationships offer multiple forms of support that relate to academic degrees and careers, including subject knowledge, psychological and emotional support, and role modeling [55–57]. Research shows that alters can provide valuable advice to women and underrepresented minority students in engineering to help them cope with microaggressions, fit, and a range of social and academic concerns [32, 55, 57]. Recent work has shown that professional STEM societies which focus on SGM students (e.g., oSTEM) provide crucial emotional and support resources to SGM students that help them navigate reactions to their identities and fit in STEM [35]. Importantly, social capital research emphasizes the ways in which socio-demographics (e.g., gender, sexuality, ethno-racial grouping, age, education) affect network position.

Because they are perceived as traditional outsiders, SGM individuals, especially if they are “out”, might have less access to benefits from network-based social capital [29, 58, 59], which could contribute to poorer feelings of fit. In particular, not all transgender students receive the same level or quality of faculty mentoring as that received by their cisgender peers [60]. SGM students sometimes find it difficult to connect with faculty mentors who also can be role models [61, 62]. Research offers differing findings relating to professors and SGM students, with some noting that many faculty are “clueless” when it comes to assisting SGM students [43], while others are more clearly supportive [42]. Student peer relationships also affect their persistence and retention [63]. The amount of, and degree to which, students have positive interpersonal interactions with peers can predict their success as well as their intellectual and personal development [64]. Negative peer relationships, as the most likely source of harassment and exclusion experienced by SGM students, also impact their persistence [14, 65]. Previous research has shown that STEM environments with more women are more welcoming to SGM identities [66], but this may have little overall impact, as STEM departments tend to lack women students and faculty. In terms of participatory social capital, outreach to SGM-focused organizations (e.g., oSTEM) may be very important for SGM undergraduates, who frequently report the need to establish relationships with faculty, staff, and peers outside their discipline [26, 55, 65]. Such organizations may create a physical or epistemological safe space outside students’ academic departments [26, 67]. These organizations are shown to potentially more often offer support to help students persist by focusing on emotional support (e.g., helping students make sense of others’ reactions to their identities), rather than providing direct academic support and resources (e.g., advice on how to study) [35].

Resilience in STEM: Using micro-defenses to fit

Nadal and colleagues [33] classified the ways that SGM people react to microaggressions in three ways. These ways include behavioral reactions or how SGM people react to microaggressions in terms of actions (such as through ignoring the microaggressions or confronting others about them), cognitive reactions or how people think about or make sense of microaggressions (such as through accepting them or becoming resilient in dealing with them), and emotional reactions or the emotions people experience as a result of the microaggressions (such as feeling sad or angry). Research on cultural norms in engineering programs has highlighted the behavioral, cognitive, and emotional efforts required by SGM students to express identity or ‘navigate’ [68] engineering programs’ heteronormative climate (e.g., passing, living compartmentalized lives, and isolating oneself from engineering peers) which entail a tremendous amount of emotional work and can “limit these students’ opportunities to succeed, relative to their heterosexual peers” [7, p. 1]. Our study focuses on SGM students in STEM and primarily their behavioral reactions, though emotional and cognitive reactions also emerged in our work, in which students employed various strategies to manage identity and cultivate a network of supportive alters.

Recent years have seen more work on SGM students in STEM, with the most recent studies paying attention to students’ cognitive reactions or resilience as well as their social capital rather than simply their academic-climate related obstacles. For instance, Kersey and Voigt found that SGM students’ sense of resilience was usually combined with a deep desire to pursue STEM, that students persisted in STEM as a form of resistance, and that professional SGM societies were a powerful support for student resilience [46]. Miller and colleagues’ work on SGM STEM persistence focused on the behavioral and cognitive strategies students used to navigate the hypermasculine “Dude” or “Bro” culture in STEM, including participating in it, resisting it, traversing liminal parts of it, blending into it, or rationalizing it [69]. Similarly, Steele found that gay men used behavioral strategies like closetedness and gender performativity to deal with the unwelcoming STEM environment [41]. This finding replicates Cech and Waidzunas’ earlier work suggesting that passing and covering (e.g., closetedness) were reported strategies by SGM in STEM [7]. The authors additionally found that SGM students mobilized skill development to make themselves indispensable to others, for example, by mastering mapping programs so that they would be valuable group members on teamwork assignments. Finally, Mattheis, Cruz-Ramírez De Arellano, and Yoder used a cognitive queer STEM identity framework to understand how SGM STEM employees “come to understand and name themselves as queer in terms of gender and/or sexuality,” form specific STEM identities, and navigate professional and personal influences on how they express identity in work and school [68, p. 1850]. The authors primarily focused on internal identity work wherein participants compartmentalized aspects of their identity and put less focus on their strategies for mitigating fit, though they do briefly mention behavioral strategies such as being more visible, creating changes in work environments, and seeking out SGM networks as coping mechanisms.

To better understand how students navigate STEM academic climates, our study builds on these intersecting bodies of literature that highlight SGM behavioral strategies of persistence by introducing the concept of micro-defenses. The concept of micro-defenses extends work on emotional strategies of resilience in STEM by offering a concept that is focused on the on-the-ground, external micro-interactions within the STEM microclimate that also brings together work on behavioral strategies and social networks. The term micro-defense is similar to Sue and colleagues’ [70] concept of microintervention, with the former focusing on the strategies minoritized students use to navigate microaggressions in the STEM climate as a form of social capital and the latter offering a broader conceptualization taking into consideration not only those who are affected (i.e., targets) but also allies and bystanders. Additionally, Sue and colleagues’ framework offers an expansive articulation of the multiple reasons and purposes for which a microintervention might be used (e.g., to educate the offender) that go beyond the focus of STEM degree persistence in our work here. We also extend Nadal’s work [13] by offering a specific mechanism through which behavioral, cognitive, and emotional strategies are all employed by SGM students as they persist in STEM.

To be clear, within the STEM microclimate, micro-defenses are specific, individual interactional processes through which students deploy a range of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive defenses, such as stereotype management or building a social network of supportive alters [30]. Micro-defenses oppose microaggressions, both as reactions and preemptively. When a microaggressive act or comment is made, a comment or act made in resistive response to it is a micro-defense. Micro-defenses can also occur without being immediately precipitated by a microaggression, for instance, when done in order to prevent microaggressions (e.g., a student affixing a ‘PRIDE’ sticker to their laptop and then using their laptop in STEM spaces to make a statement about acceptance of or identities related to gay rights or a student choosing not to affix the sticker to avoid potentially negative reactions of others in class or lab). Importantly, micro-defenses can also include the cultivation of social networks to include supportive others. This cultivation supports the pre-emptive avoidance of unsafe people who would not be supportive of SGM students’ identities. These networks would fulfil the needs of SGM students who encounter a negative STEM microclimate, while supporting their access to resources to achieve their STEM goals.

Recruitment, participants, and measures

The research team conducted interviews with 29 SGM STEM undergraduates recruited through two universities and six participating national STEM professional organizations. To facilitate recruitment, the organizations distributed IRB-approved recruitment statements to their members, while project personnel at the two universities distributed IRB-approved recruitment emails to local SGM and STEM group leaders. Organization members and university group leaders then distributed the recruitment statements through their own networks.

Individuals interested in participating in the study contacted the PI to schedule interviews. They completed an information form (S1 Protocol) that asked about their gender identities, sexual orientations, races/ethnicities, academic background, and their academic and career goals. They uploaded the form using a secure link provided by the researchers. The research team then contacted participants to schedule videoconference interviews via Skype or Zoom. Two research team members co-interviewed each participant. There were two two-member teams led by a total of four researchers. Participants received a $25 incentive for participating in the study. As shown in Table 1, the 29 participants in this study self-identified a range of gender identities, sexual identities, and races/ethnicities. Participants were able to select all gender, sexual, and racial/ethnic identities applicable to them.

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Table 1. Participant characteristics.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263561.t001

After refining the interview protocol (S2 Protocol) guided by the analysis of six transcribed pilot interviews and feedback from advisory committee members, the interviewers were trained on and used the same interview guide and protocol. The interview protocol focused on 1) student’s perceptions of their fit in their STEM microclimate; 2) how students managed their gender and/or sexual identities within their STEM microclimate; 3) how students navigated the STEM microclimate, including their experiences of microaggressions; and 4) students’ social capital (defined as students’ social networks, or people influential to them in their pursuit of their degrees). The interview guide focused on the STEM microclimate, but we also include responses here wherein students were asked about the STEM microclimate but occasionally discussed other factors (e.g., roommates) outside of the immediate STEM microclimate that nevertheless affected how they persisted in STEM. In addition, the interview guide predominantly contained items to ascertain how students’ SGM identities affected their fit in STEM, whether those identities mattered during interactions in the STEM microclimate, and how they navigated such spaces in light of their identities. Sample items from the interview protocol include:

• “As an individual who is [insert their identities reported on demographic form], how do you feel like you fit in your STEM program?”
• “Do you think any of your identities have mattered to your peers/instructors/mentors in your STEM program? In what ways?”
• “How have others’ perceptions of or reactions to your identities and experiences affected your choices while pursuing your STEM goals?”
• “Tell me about the kind of information and resources you have accessed through these relationships to assist you in pursuing your STEM goals.”

Interviews lasted approximately one hour and were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Each interview began with the informed consent process followed by the interviewers reviewing the demographic form that was sent out ahead of time to confirm the participants’ identities.

Analysis

A total of five members of the research team engaged in the analysis that informs this article. First, four core members of the team read the 29 transcripts several times and engaged in several rounds of conversation about how the interviews informed the project goals. These conversations then spurred a focus on the variables presented in this study. Interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis in which a codebook was developed based on these conversations by two of the four core members of the research team. The codes related to the key concepts of this project, including the concepts of fit and social capital [71]. The codes analyzed for this article included: how participants felt they fit in their STEM program, how they managed their fit in STEM, the role of language in STEM fit, and the role of the institution in STEM fit. These codes did not necessarily coincide with specific interview questions, but rather were used based on the major concepts in the literature and the research team’s review of the transcripts and familiarity with their content. The same two members of the research team, along with a fifth member, held several meetings in which the codes were discussed and created, including the definitions of each code. As part of these discussions, it was clear that lines of data could possibly fall into more than one code, in which case it was determined that all appropriate codes should be used. The fifth member of the research team imported the transcripts into NVivo, a qualitative data analysis computer software used for the analysis of qualitative data, and then read each transcript and applied the codes within the program.

Coding was done in a wide purview, meaning that codes were applied to include the interview question and the entire passage of interest so that context could be retained for analysis. Two members of the research team then exported all the passages associated with each code and reviewed the excerpts linked to each of the codes one at a time in order to identify themes related to the key concepts of this work within the students’ responses. Specifically, aside from organizing this initial round of coding, we did not use NVivo for additional coding. Instead we used analytic memoing to identify trends or patterns and the relationships among these patterns. We also identified and analyzed unique experiences reported by our respondents in relation to our research questions from the exported passages to ascertain their relationship to respondents’ status characteristics or other experiences.

Our analytic memos were then collectively crafted into the themes presented here [72]. The five-person research team discussed and circulated drafts of the themes and refined them based on the literature and familiarity with the data. No themes were excluded or discarded, but some were revised to highlight particular foci (i.e., we highlighted students’ reactions to microaggressions as micro-defenses, though portions of that theme could have also been located within the earlier section on climate and fit). After finalizing these themes, quotes taken from the coded excerpts were compiled for demonstration, and then were organized in relation to the research questions. In the end, the team reached consensus about how well the themes represented the interview data overall, thus demonstrating the reliability of our data. Our findings are credible given that the interview guide was based on questions and findings from previous research, transferable as we engaged in appropriate sampling procedures and have a diverse sample of participants (including those from a range of universities and programs), confirmable given that the findings come from our analysis process articulated above and participants’ own words, and dependable as we expect that researchers studying SGM students in STEM will likely find similar student experiences and strategies in their data [73].

Perceptions of fit: Majority statuses offer intersecting protection

Twelve of 29 students (41%) reported fitting in well in their STEM department. All of these students were sexual minorities, and none were gender minorities. These students described their fit similarly; they reported that they felt comfortable, safe, and well liked and never felt excluded in their STEM microclimate. For example, when asked if he had ever felt excluded in his STEM department, Jeff, a white gay man, said, “Not really, to be honest…[the communities] I am a part of, whether it be from school or work, have all been pretty including.” Similarly, Jess, a white bisexual woman, believed her identities did not really impact her relationships with professors. She commented, “Because of the fact that [my bisexuality] was not as visible to mentors and faculty members, I don’t think it’s made much of an impact.” In another example, Kevin, a white gay man, stated that others’ reactions to his majority statuses and the hidden visibility of this sexuality promoted his feeling of fit in STEM. He noted:

I think that’s very much because I can be straight passing. It would be harder if I wasn’t as straight passing or if I wasn’t male or white. But for me personally, I haven’t ever felt excluded from those communities.

Seven students (24%) said they fit but noted that there were varying circumstances or climate zones (i.e., locations) affecting their fit at particular times. Michael, a white gay transgender student, felt safe in their department, for instance, but not on the campus as a whole. Some students reported fitting in with regards to some of their identities, but not others. For instance, Lina, a bisexual Asian woman, noted that she fit on campus but felt “very out of place” in STEM and that her identity often stood out because of her intersecting gender, racial, and sexual identities. Lina commented, “I’m the only girl and only Asian and only gay person [in my STEM department].” Similarly, three other women said they felt they fit, but at times their identity as a woman made them feel uncomfortable or unsafe. For example, when asked how biases against women have affected her comfort and safety in her department, Kylie, a white lesbian woman shared, “It makes me feel a lot less safe in the field knowing that my emotional health could potentially be compromised by going into a STEM field [because of my gender].” Here, Kylie connects the unwelcoming STEM microclimate to negative mental health due to not fitting in because of how others treat women.

Seven students (24%) described not fitting in their department. Some students felt the STEM microclimate was unaccepting and therefore chose not to connect with people in their department for self-preservation. Three students, an Asian gay man, a white lesbian woman, and an American-Iranian queer transgender individual said that they did not fit in their department nor in SGM spaces. Two students, a Black bisexual woman and the previously mentioned American-Iranian queer transgender individual, Afra, described how their poor feelings of fit led them to consider changing their majors and their schools. Afra explained switching universities:

My trans identity wasn’t respected like my physical disability wasn’t respected. I didn’t feel like there were many resources. It became this compounding set of reasons why I couldn’t take it. I had to leave. It was a really good school too, a top ranked school.

Poor fit caused another student to transfer to a different university as well. Jon, a white gay man, explained that he ended up changing roommates because of homophobic comments by his roommate. Jon noted, “One of the main reasons for me coming to [my university] was the homophobia [at my previous university].”

Collectively, these excerpts demonstrate that reactions to sexual, gender, and racial and ethnic identities within the STEM microclimate affected student perceptions of fit, and that these and other identities, such as disability, intersected to further affect fit. Notably, some students who reported fitting in later went on to also report experiencing microaggressions.

Experiences and stereotypes greatly affect fit

Given, in part, to reactions to the often heightened visibility of their identities, gender minority (GM) students experienced poorer fit in comparison to sexual minority (SM) students. GM students reported experiencing negative treatment from others when they did not adhere to cis norms regarding clothing and makeup, a lack of appropriate pronoun use by faculty, and discussions of gender-neutral bathrooms by others that were sometimes negative. Jokes, negative comments, and stereotypes about their identities were reported by SM students as well.

The effect of network-based and participatory social capital on fit

From steering students into career plans to guiding them on classes and internships, students with access to friends, professors, advisors, and organizations that were accepting of SGM identities reported that they fit in STEM better. Students without such social capital described poorer feelings of fit. Frequently, students reported that women and people of color were more welcoming, and felt that they provided better support for fit than older white men, whom students reported often made negative comments and assumptions about SGM students.

Micro-defenses: Self-presentation

Students employed micro-defenses in two main ways: through self-presentation and by cultivating social networks. First, because how they are treated by others is so crucial to fit and persistence, and because it is not possible for students to avoid all people and interactions in their STEM microclimate that were not SGM-welcoming, students fine-tuned how they self-presented within their STEM microclimate to manage or prevent mistreatment from others. Students used micro-defenses: micro-level interactions through which they managed others’ perceptions of their selves through a range of behaviors, including what they wore, how they spoke, the information they shared about themselves, and even how they used external SGM signifiers (e.g., PRIDE stickers). Students also carefully considered what information to share and used language covering or projecting their sexuality as well as being silent or partially open when it was most useful for them, thus managing who became part of their social network. They also specifically chose to engage professors who were women and people of color to further control the building of a social network containing supportive alters.

Micro-defenses: Cultivating a safe social network and microclimate

As mentioned, the second main micro-defense that students employed entailed a deliberate cultivation of social networks and STEM microclimates in attempts to surround themselves with friendly people and avoid negative interactions, and indeed to increase their fit and promote persistence. These students engaged in a variety of sophisticated and extensive measures designed to yield a STEM microclimate terrain that included accepting people and avoided those who were unaccepting. Students engaged in cultivation strategies when they chose what classes or universities in which to enroll, ‘testing the waters’ to determine if people were accepting, and seeking out women and people of color as mentors.