Hello and welcome. My name is Cindy and I'm a researcher and project manager at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry. You're listening to an episode of our series, "Transition Points: Snapshots of a STEM Journey." "Transition Points" is a series of podcasts, briefs, and blog posts that we've created in order to share some of the insights from our longitudinal study, The Developing YOUth! Project.

This project follows alumni from our legacy teen program here at the Museum. That teen program was called the Science Minors and Achievers. The project is mixed methods and has a quantitative component which includes our annual surveys. As well as a qualitative component. The qualitative methods we used include participant observations from when the teens were still in the program as well as in-depth interviews we've conducted with some participants over the years.

We last interviewed our participants during the summer of 2021. Some of them were finishing up college, some were starting their careers, and some were pursuing graduate school. For a few more details about the project and series overall, take a listen to our introductory episode or visit us online.

Participants in the Science Minors and Achievers program reported feeling supported and respected during their time in the program. We go into more detail on how they felt supported and respected in our other episodes. In our other episode, we went into detail about the different ways our participants felt supported and respected during their time in the program. This created a strong sense of belonging to the Museum.

In this episode, we'll discuss ways in which our participants continued to seek that sense of belonging once they left for college. We found that some of these spaces may have fallen short, especially for our Black Women participants.

At Griffin MSI

Overall, participants in the Science Minors and Achievers program felt a strong sense of belonging which contributed to their feeling supported by the Museum.

To our participants, the sense of belonging and feeling supported by the Museum extends beyond what the Museum provides them.

Rather, it describes a relationship they perceive with the Museum that it is reciprocal: they belong to the Museum and the Museum belongs to them. In addition, their access to Museum spaces, staff, and institutional knowledge contributed to their sense of belonging. Participants also described feeling proud that others associated them with the Museum, which they perceived to have a prestigious reputation.

They described a sense of ownership over their role at the Museum and felt trusted with responsibilities.

Many participants talked about feeling like they were able to contribute to the Museum in meaningful ways. In one of our other episodes, we talk more about opportunities the Achievers felt the Museum provided for them and how these opportunities connected them to others in the Griffin MSI, and therefore STEM, community. Beyond feeling connected to the STEM community, Achievers also talked about BEING the connector themselves. They felt the Museum gave them opportunities to be essential to it.

Definitely the events like their really big events that we had like I remember there was like a fundraising event that the museum did that the size of miners are the cheap miners and miners and achievers Yeah. We had all like, do like our own like science demonstrations and it was just a really cool event like to be part of because you got to show signs to people who like care and like donate to like a museum and that's why I like all these exhibits come out and it's a great thing to see. That was one thing the second thing was like that celebration at the end actually made it really worth it because it was like you got to show like your work once again to everyone.

Achievers resoundingly named the people in the Museum as a major reason why they enjoyed it. In our episodes on the staff and peers, we go into this with more detail. In addition some participants had ties to the Museum before they joined the program. Tasha wasn't necessarily into science as a child and still wouldn't consider herself too interested in STEM as a field now. She told me:

TASHA: If you put me in a science class right now I probably won't do that well. The museum it made it made a lot of things seem possible.

Tasha's mom was the one who signed her up for the SMA program, and she was something of a legacy there-many of her family members participated in the program including her siblings and cousins. While she didn't voluntarily participate at first, Tasha chose to continue to go later on. When I asked Tasha about what drew her to the Museum, she said:

TASHA: Probably the people even outside of the program. [Redacted], [redacted], our leads [redacted], love [reacted]. [Redacted] was so fun. Um, who else was there? Even when people who weren't like a part of the achievers program, the volunteers who were there, [redact], everybody, everybody was just so friendly. So nice. So open to talking. It felt like a little family [...] Other than the people I, we actually went to the museum a lot when I was a kid. So it was cool because of that. But I also like talking to people, kind of. i like kids. Yeah, I like kids. Yeah, I like being able to play with them and teach them science was really fun because they're kids they get excited about absolutely everything that made it that made it enjoyable and I just liked the museum as a whole.

In College

In college, participants continued to think of the Museum as a community where they belonged. That sense of belonging to the Museum community fueled their commitment to the program when they were still in it, as well as their continued commitment to the Museum at present through their participation in this study.

While in college and thinking back on her time at the Museum, Floriana said,

FLORIANA: It was a community aspect. I think it gave me a lot of like social interactions that I didn't get [otherwise] and it was just a lot. It was a supportive fun environment where I got to learn and I got to work with other peers like myself, interact with the guests. It was just, I don't know, it helped me come out of my shell and definitely made me much more confident and much more extroverted than I thought I could be.

For some of our participants, the sense of belonging and feeling of support from a STEM community was not easy to find in college. Emma described joining a student organization for Black students in Engineering at her university. While this organization helped her feel some sense of belonging in her early years of college, as she advanced in her degree, the demands of her computer science program took up all of her time and energy.

Beyond the demands on her time, her major in computer science was even more disproportionately white than the rest of the school of engineering so that she became more isolated from peers who she felt understood her. Hear more from Emma in episode on positive peer culture.

One of our Black Caribbean American women participants, who we call Pia, talked about her experiences looking for a supportive community. Before we dive into it, I'll let you know now, while Pia encountered many spaces where she felt others did not understand her, she did also find some spaces she felt she belonged. One such space where she felt a sense of belonging through familiarity, was a student group she joined that echoed her community at the Museum:

PIA: Yeah, that was really fun. Because I, what I like, because you know, they have like the little fair and you walk through and see what you want to do. And so I was like, that's exactly what I've been doing at the museum. Like, I love that I have to do it, you know. So it was just so fun. Because they did they like coordinated all of the like, little activities that they do. And, and then we went to like second grade classrooms and third grade classrooms and did the activities for them. And that was, that was just so much fun. Because I also love working with kids and stuff like that. So yeah, that was a good time to get to do that again.

...

I think the similarities is that it was like, like, we were doing it ourselves, you know, like, as young students and everything. And so there's like a whole team in the club that like, designed the experiments, and you know, so they would like research everything and see what kinds of experiment experiments would be, like appropriate for this age group. And like, what would be easy to do within like, an hour timeframe. And it was like, essentially, just like showing young kids like the magic of science and how cool it can be and how accessible it is. Because Yeah, like at the museum, we're like, showing guests, like a good time with like, these kinds of science experiments and showing them that science isn't like, untouchable [...] So yeah, and it was really cool to get to like show the kids all these like cool little, just fun little easy experiments.

In another episode, Skill Building for Success, we touched on how the tiered structure of the Achievers program helped to address the developmental needs of the participants.

Talking to the participants about their transition into college, it was apparent that this was still true; Achievers still needed their activities to evolve with them. So while joining this student group helped Pia transition into her college because of how familiar she was with the things they did there, her needs changed over time, as to be expected.

One of the ways we, by we I mean researchers, educators, advisors, and other people in this realm-one of the ways we try to suggest that students, especially students who are going to be in the racial, ethnic, gender, and or other identities, minority at their institution is-we tell them to join a co-ethnic organization of some sort-for Black students this might be NSBE (the National Society for Black Engineers or their university's Black Student Union).

But joining organizations like these isn't a one-size fits all solution. Two of our participants who talked about joining a student organization geared towards their Black identities talked about how these didn't feel like quite enough. For Emma, the extra time and energy it took to join such organizations was too much on top of her already rigorous Computer Science program.

To complicate things further, we might consider how within organizations for Black students, we still need to think about what being Black means to each of our students. Pia talked about grappling with the sense of belonging she did (and did not feel) within various Black communities.

Pia told me that she had joined the Black Student Union at her PWI, but that it wasn't quite what she needed in terms of the support and community she was looking for. But that when she joined theater and was cast in their production of "Grease," she felt she found a space where she felt she belonged:

PIA: I want to say it was like this freedom of expression that everybody had and I guess I may be theater people are just you know, they're just weird people. Like that's what I needed. Like like just some some people who weren't afraid to just be who they were because I genuinely that's what I felt like I felt like I was trying to have these like I don't know conversations about things that i i don't know truly believed in or not necessarily like political conversations or anything like that but just. it was so funny it was just like it would be like a run of the mill conversation and like suddenly it was just like this disconnect that I felt, I was like oh, like they're not on the same page that I'm on but I guess with you know, people in the cast of "Grease" I think it is like theater people are weird people and there's just like this like freeness just this freedom that they feel in the way that they can be you know, and even then it makes sense to because that was also where I found the most like diversity as well like they were there was one other Black person in the cast and that made me feel so good. And he was gay too and that was like what?

Some participants reported feeling different from the communities they encountered in college. They described realizing that some of the people they'd met did not care about the same things they cared about, were not as experienced with different types of people, and did not share the same interests and motivations as they did. As a result, some participants like Pia, felt not only isolated, but scrutinized,

PIA: I feel like it felt mostly like I was trying to connect to other people and there was just like a very clear, I don't know. We're just not thinking the same way or that we're not coming from the same place or same background. And so I would just... I felt most times, I felt like I was genuinely just like, being my truest self and it just felt like people couldn't meet me where I was or they expected something different from me from how I was acting—they like didn't expect me to act the way I was. And so that made me feel more isolated.

Not all of our Black Women participants felt isolated or excluded from their peers or institutions once they got to college. One participant in particular, shared that in her major, she learned that most of her classmates were shy or quiet like she was, but that just like her experience in SMA, once she spoke to one person (or they spoke to her), she would feel she was not alone and could be comfortable.

JEN: I was absolutely so shy. I was so scared. I was so quiet. I didn't say a word for like, my freshman year. I didn't say a word in like, any of my classes in the beginning. The only reason I started talking with like the one person who's sitting next to me, said like, Hey, I think you I saw you draw on your paper, I think you draw really cute and I was like, wow, thank you. And then that's how we started talking. [...] But I was definitely quiet like I was just, I wasn't like afraid of like the people it's just like I didn't really know like, what do I talk about? What do I say?

...

Like a lot of my friends were just like, when you're an animation student, you spend a lot of time in the lab. So it's just like, a lot of people just like, once you like, actually start talking. It's like you really realize how close you can actually get. [...] we ended up becoming really close friends for like ever. And a lot of the people that I'm friends with like we just been in so many classes together, like I may have saw you once or twice my sophomore year, but then we were in like five classes together in my senior year. So it's just like, it all came full circle. And like we make friends with one person. They introduce us to their friends. And just like people who are like inspired by each others' work, would go start talking to each other. And it was just like a lot of like, making friends just because like we enjoyed creating stuff together.

INTERVIEWER: "This sounds like a really supportive atmosphere to be in.

JEN: It was because we're all staying up to all hours of the night together as friends.

Jen went on to tell me that the programs at the Museum, including the internship that many Science Minors and Achievers apply for after they graduate from the program, changed her life. She said that they helped her to see that supportive groups exists and that all she needed to do was find them.

Implications

Like most of our participants, and likely most of us as people, Emma, Pia, and Jen each sought out spaces within which they might feel a sense of belonging...

Spaces that could support them...

That might surround them with people they could relate to...

In this moment we're merely looking at snapshots of their experiences.

As a researcher, I've grappled with how best to present these snapshots. Are we listening to their experiences as Black and Black Caribbean Americans? Are we listening to their stories about being young women within STEM spaces? Are we hearing about what it can be like to be a Black Woman in a predominantly white, Western, and man-dominated institution?

Or are we about to miss the point... that these Achievers, our participants, are not just ANY of those things. That their identities cannot be easily categorized and studied, although we try really hard to be able to do this...

I'm not saying there is no use or no value in focusing in on particular identities, especially when those parts are salient to the person within the context of the situation being discussed. But I don't want us to miss the point that I think each of our participants was getting across-that they are not just what we expect (or don't expect) them to be. They're artists, actors, teachers, collaborators, writers, philosophers, students, foodies, activists, poets, stylists, scientists, makers...

They are people. And yes, we are all people, but this doesn't need to be pointed out and emphasized for all of us...

When I spoke to Pia, she told me about what it was like to be herself at a predominantly white, private college in the Midwest. Her experience may sound familiar because it is version of an experience that has become something of an archetype when considering the experiences of those who may not fall into the definitions of the hegemonic ideal.

PIA: I think in high school like my group of friends I always felt so comfortable with them and going to [redact] that's kind of what I was falling back on. I was like, okay, like I I was never actually good at making friends just the funny thing like friends kind of, I kind of waited around and then like a group with sort of born you know, I figured like, if I just was myself, you know, like that would work out and I'd find people and it was like the first time that be myself didn't work. Or... people just responded to me in a very different way and I felt like people were looking at me like like I was like the first Black person they'd ever seen or something like that. Yeah, and so being myself genuinely didn't work.

Considering these snapshots of what our participants have shared with us, I'll continue to reflect on what their experiences within the Museum and then outside of the Museum might tell us about being oneself and finding belonging...

When our participants felt belonging, and that they could be their truest self-which aspect of their selves felt that the most? And when they felt isolated and lacked a strong sense of belonging, which aspects of their Selves, felt that the most?

While the episodes in this series can be listened to in any order, the episode you are listening to right now is sort of our last and culminating episode for the series. But I think, the following questions can be ones you reflect on during or after you've completed the series...

What does it mean to belong?

What part of ourselves feel that belonging the most?

When we think about belonging for others, or IF we think about it for others, what parts of them are we assuming need to feel that belonging the most?

And then, What assumptions are we therefore, making about others?

Conclusion

In this episode we dug deeper into how feeling a sense of belonging to communities, or rather, feeling the absence of this, affected some of our Black Women-identifying participants in particular. We focused on these participants because of the stark contrast between their experiences in college, and the experiences our participants described while in the Science Minors and Achievers program.

Our episode on skill building for success, focuses more on how other features of the program helped participants to build skills that set them apart from their peers in college or in their careers.

In our episode on Meaningful Opportunities, we'll talk a little bit more about how our participants felt they were able to use science education to impact their communities. Another episode in this series, focuses on how participants felt staff in the program contributed to their supportive community.

Our episode on the positive peer culture facilitated in the program details how participants felt about their fellow Achievers and the impact this had on their feelings of support in the program. In that episode, we also discuss how the lack of a positive peer culture some of our participants experienced while in college impacted them.

Research Brief #5 (PDF)