Dissertation Proposal Announcement Ed.D. Program: Ildiko Koczan “Towards Equity Through IT Education: A Qualitative Study of Gender Minority IT Students’ Experiences”

IT (Information Technology) professionals are critical assets in the current US knowledge-based technological economy (Eisenhart, et al., 2015) as they play an important role in creating technology that is consequential across multiple dimensions of the human experience (Rodriguez & Lehman, 2018). Creating technology that can serve our diverse society equitably requires diverse groups of people in making that technology (Lunn, et al., 2021). However, low representation of gender minority IT students is a persistent problem in the information technology fields (Lunn, et al., 2021; Rodriguez& Lehman, 2018). Many efforts to increase gender equality in tech over the years have focused on STEM and women broadly rather than specifically exploring information technology as a college major and addressing the specific experiences of gender and racial minority IT students. Students with multiply marginalized identities may have a harder time developing the needed “tech identity” to persist and successfully transition into tech careers. This qualitative study proposes to take an intersectional approach to consider how social constructs like race, gender, and ethnicity influence the experiences of Information Technology and Informatics (ITI) gender minority students at the School of Communication and Information (SC&I) at large research university. This study will employ a talking circle and in-depth interviews with 10-15 individuals to highlight gender minority student experiences. This proposed study will aid in understanding gender minority students’ experiences in the ITI program and explores how gender minority students’ experiences contribute to their tech identity development that is critical for successful transitioning to the tech field (Lunn, et al., 2021). The results of this study will enhance our understanding of gender minority ITI students’ perspectives that helps in developing more meaningful and culturally responsive advising efforts to ultimately ease gender minority students’ transitioning to tech careers.

To access the Zoom link required to attend, please contact academic.services@gse.rutgers.edu.