“You are a Machine Here, You Work Here, You Perform”: Queer Students’ Perceptions of Domain-Specific Climates in Engineering Doctoral Education

Background: Negative, unwelcoming experiences among queer students in engineering education contribute to the loss of talent in the innovation workforce. Yet, research on such experiences often relies on broad notions of “climate,” limiting its usefulness for identifying institutional levers for change. Based on organizational science, this study employs the integrative climate framework, which identifies domain-specific climates—diversity, authenticity, psychosocial safety, psychological safety, mastery, and performance climate—that shape student outcomes, promote in/equality, and may be especially relevant to students from diverse historically-excluded groups.

Purpose: Centering the voices of queer students in engineering doctoral programs and applying the integrative climate framework, we explored how students interpreted signals of domain-specific climates associated with retention, commitment, and satisfaction students perceived in their departments.

Approach: We conducted unstructured qualitative interviews with 11 queer students enrolled in engineering doctoral programs at universities throughout the U.S. Interviews elicited informants’ descriptions of what they noticed happening or was permitted in their departments. We analyzed transcripts using a framework-guided, deductive thematic approach focused on psychological (i.e., individual-level) climate.

Results: Informants’ accounts revealed meaning-level themes across six domain-specific climates, in which departmental signals were interpreted as prioritizing productivity and competition over learning and wellbeing, normalizing distress, and rendering voice and vulnerability risky. For queer doctoral students, these interpretations often carried heightened consequences, shaping identity management, uncertainty about available support, and decisions around concealment or disclosure.

Conclusions: By foregrounding students’ psychological climate perceptions, this study demonstrates how a domain-specific climate approach illuminates institutional dynamics that may be obscured in broader climate framings. Centering queer students as informants highlights how students from historically-excluded groups can offer distinctive insight into how departmental signals around safety, authenticity, performance, and support are interpreted and navigated. Findings suggest that domain-specific climates provide actionable insight for improving equity, inclusion, and student persistence in engineering doctoral programs.