Adopting an intersectional lens, this timely volume explores the lived experiences of members of the queer and trans community in post-secondary STEM culture in the US to provide critical insights into progressing socially just STEM education pathways.

Offering contributions from students, faculty, practitioners, and administrators, the volume highlights prevailing issues of heteronormativity and marginalization across a range of STEM disciplines. Autoethnographic accounts place minority experiences within the broader context of social and cultural phenomena to reveal subtle and overt forms of exclusion, and systematic barriers to participation in STEM professions, academia, and research. Finally, the book offers key recommendations to inform future research and practice.

This volume will benefit researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in higher education, engineering education, and the sociology of education more broadly. Those involved with diversity, equity, and inclusion within education, queer theory, and gender and sexuality studies will also benefit from this volume.

1: What Do We Know and Why Should We Support Queer and Trans People in STEM?

Bryce E. Hughes, Stephanie Farrell, and Kelly J. Cross

Part I: Queer Students: Where do I fit in STEM?

2: I am Gay, Not Invisible!

Miguel Moore

3: Transcending the Margins and Boundaries as Latin-American Engineer

Héctor E. Rodríguez-Simmonds

4: A Call to Make Queer Erasure, Violence, and Battle Fatigue in STEM Visible

D.C. Beardmore

Part II: Queer Staff: How Can I Create Safe Spaces for Queer People in STEM?

5: Navigating and Celebrating Your Otherness to Succeed as a Queer Person in STEM

Robyn Sandekian

6: Local Minima and Maxima in Trans-STEM Affirmations

Kyle Trenshaw

Part III: Queer Faculty: How Can I Build Community for Queer People in STEM

7: Invisible and Exhausted on the Margins of Academia

Zoe Reidinger

8: Queer STEM Parenting Made me a Better Teacher/Instructor

Stephen Podowitz-Thomas and Erjia Yan

9: Being Queer Taught Me How to Teach

Anthony Butterfield

10: Empathy, Sympathy, and Accountability

Aric Bryant

11: Building a Village to Manage my Triple Threat Multiple Identities

Kelly J. Cross

Part IV: Queer Allies, Allyship, and Advocates: How Can I Support Queer People in STEM?

12: Can You See Me Now: Being a Black Queer Man in STEM

Chris Carr and Darryl Dickerson

13: My Evolution Over 40 Years in Higher Education: From Silence in the Closet to Out and Evolving

Karen P. DePauw and Kelly J. Cross

14: The Act of Embrace as Queer Resistance in Engineering

Donna Riley

15: My Ongoing Journey through Allyship

Adrienne R. Minerick

16: What Does It Mean and Where Do We Go from Here?

Stephanie Farrell, Kelly J. Cross, and Bryce Hughes