RESEARCH AND SCOPE

In an effort to support Black undergraduate STEM students, policy reforms often fall short due to limited understandings of Black racial identities, hindering true racial equity in STEM education. To address this, a collaborative research project spanning multiple institutions explores how self-identifying Black undergraduates perceive, understand, and embody Blackness within STEM fields.

This project accounts for Blackness through a multidimensional-multiplicative lens, noting that racial identity for Black people in the U.S. comprises different ethnic, geographical, and cultural identities in addition to considerations of gender, sexuality, and religion among other identities. This project employs mosaic ethnography across five sites situated in the Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, Southwest, and Midwest regions of the US. Black epiSTEMologies aims to create research tools and products, including theories and professional developments, that will influence racial equity-focused STEM policies and practices that address the nuanced needs of Black students within and beyond higher education. Such policies and practices include but are not limited to enhancing the access, success, and engagement of Black undergraduates in STEM.