Engineering Counterspaces to Address Inequities in Preparation for Undergraduate Academics

Background: The Washington STate Academic RedShirt program (STARS) aims to broaden access to engineering education through intensive educational and professional development support for high-achieving, lower-income, first-generation students whose academic backgrounds have underprepared them for engineering.

Purpose: This research asks how STARS creates counterspaces to enable its students to pursue an engineering degree. The guiding research questions are: 1) What counterspaces have emerged from STARS? 2) In the counterspaces enabled by STARS, do some marginalized groups express greater or broader positive outcomes than other groups? 3) Is STARS providing sufficient counterspaces for students?

Method: We hosted virtual focus groups that explored STARS students’ experiences. Students added comments to Jamboards, which could be anonymous and helped guide some of the discussion. We asked about community, belonging, and academic and professional outcomes. We considered that counterspaces may operate at multiple levels: meta (the program and program staff), meso (students from other cohorts), and micro (cohort-mates). We completed collaborative and iterative coding and analysis.

Results: We find that STARS facilitates counterspaces at meta, meso, and micro levels to facilitate students going beyond stereotypes, adopting counterstories, and developing adaptive strategies to thrive in their programs. We did not find strong differences in overall experience across marginalized groups, though only students of color highlighted the importance of connecting based on shared identities. Some of these students found these connections outside of STARS, suggesting that the program’s counterspaces are not sufficient for all students.

Conclusions: This study highlights the power of program counterspaces to provide structural support. STARS counterspaces help address inequities in preparation, so that its students excel in their undergraduate engineering program. Supporting students to access non-program counterspaces may further meet their needs. Other universities can use similar approaches to help expand equity in this field, though more systemic change is needed.