Search

Cisheteronormativity is prevalent throughout college STEM discourses and classrooms. In this paper, we present findings from a U.S. based study focused on the experiences of collegiate STEM students with minoritized identities of sexuality and gender (MIoSG) as the backdrop for discussing how current harmful ideologies in STEM perpetuate cisheteronormativity through discursive practice. We propose that humanistic classrooms and pedagogy can work to dismantle cisheteronormative D/discourses in STEM and create MIoSG inclusive STEM classrooms and programs. Our findings highlight the ways participants experienced cisheteronormative D/discourses in their collegiate STEM contexts. We discuss how these experiences might be mitigated through humanistic educational approaches in college STEM contexts. Our aim is for readers to gain simultaneous theoretical and pragmatic insights on how cisheteronormative D/discourses operate in collegiate STEM classrooms and educational programs.

The sociopolitical landscape for queer people has changed dramatically in recent decades; however, progress has been both halting and uneven. While this is evident in many areas of professional and private life, this study focuses on the experiences of queer students in STEM learning environments in US colleges and universities. Specifically, we explore student expressions of temporality and futurity with regards to their STEM experiences and aspirations. Engagement with queer theory, especially queer formulations of time and space, alerted us to the importance of sociopolitical developments of the past several decades—particularly the rise and entrenchment of neoliberal politics in both academic STEM arenas and gay and queer politics. Engaging with queer temporality and spatiality, neoliberalism, and the homonormative turn, we found three interdependent themes: (1) the (re)negotiation of queer politics within academic disciplines linked to the neoliberal state; (2) the multiple bifurcations of self, time, and space required to simultaneously navigate queerness and STEM; and (3) the development of utopian projections of the future intended to reconcile queer identity, neoliberalism, and STEM. These findings point to a tension between queer identities and STEM fields arising not from the nature of the fields themselves but from science’s interconnectedness with a neoliberal economy. This tension not only structures participants’ current experiences in STEM learning spaces but also flavors the way they consider their futures as queer scientists.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore student activism within community colleges, including opportunities for and barriers to activism. The authors argue that community colleges can and should leverage curricular and co-curricular venues to teach about and promote activism, thus encouraging socio-academic integrative moments that combine both academic and social integration. While four-year institutions might engage students in learning about and practicing activism via opportunities primarily outside of the classroom such as student affairs offices and student leadership opportunities, community colleges can encourage greater student activism primarily in curricular contexts. Indeed, given the demographic diversity present in community colleges—where students often work part- or full-time off campus, spend little time on campus outside of coursework, and have significant personal and family responsibilities—the classroom may be the optimal venue to engage students.