Dr. Lara Perez-Felkner
Recently published in the journal New Directions for Institutional Research, the multi-authored volume “Advancing Higher Education Research on Undergraduate Women in STEM” builds on existing research and features six comprehensive chapters that advance research about the experiences of women in STEM across institutional contexts and across various STEM disciplines.
The volume similarly emphasizes a focus on intersectionality, while encouraging “stronger interdisciplinary theory and nuanced methodology in studying women in STEM” to promote these women’s academic and career success, the editors said.
“There are complex issues at hand and so it’s important to think about how STEM disparities operate in specific disciplines,” said Perez-Felkner, lead editor and assistant professor of Higher Education and Sociology at Florida State University. “Engineering and chemistry and physics may look very different from, let’s say, biology or medical and health fields. They each have different kinds of frameworks and structures and even pathways through coursework and training that make it important to understand the kind of nuance that’s happening in each of those spaces.”
Not only do researchers studying undergraduate women in STEM need to think “small scale and large scale” about the issue, Perez-Felkner added, they need to think about “the questions around gender and intersections with gender identity that happen across the U.S. STEM education.”
Parts of the volume discuss how institutional culture, practices and policies play a role in the recruitment and retention of undergraduate women in STEM. Significantly, the volume adds to the body of literature by offering theoretical and methodological approaches that are most efficient for studying women in STEM, the editors said.
