Congratulations to EWU McNair Scholar Vanessa Sanchez for completing her McNair Summer Research Internship! She worked with mentor Dr. Kelley Cullen on her summer 2024 research, “The Attitudes and Perceptions Minority of Female Undergraduate STEM Students in Higher Education Mathematics Courses”. Vanessa’s research was presented August 15, 2024 at the McNair Summer Research Symposium.
Of her research, Vanessa explains:
Female undergraduate students have been in a “leaking pipeline” when it comes to STEM fields for years now. However, what matters most is not the number of female students graduating with a STEM degree but the ration of male and female students graduating with a STEM degree. Surveys and focus groups were conducted on female undergraduate students that are pursuing STEM or that have switched out of STEM. Surveys were also conducted on STEM faculty to also understand their perceptions and attitudes towards female undergraduate students and if they hold any bias towards them in a classroom setting.
The predicted results show that female undergraduate students do not feel as competent as their male peers in mathematics courses because they do not feel as comfortable with the material or the faculty member teaching. Female undergraduate students at the university where this was conducted have plenty of programs to help them pursue STEM fields, but it seems like they are being underutilized. Female students are not continuing to pursue STEM fields because they don’t feel a strong sense of belonging as their male peers. Future research may include studying how faculty members deliver mathematics courses and whether they are practicing pedagogies that are
responsive to culture and gender.
Vanessa Sanchez is an Honors Student at Eastern Washington University double majoring in Data Science and Data Analytics with a minor in Economics. She is a part of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) club on EWU’s campus, including participating in the Hackathon in 2024. Her research interests include issues of equity and how data science can be applied to improve resource allocation on both the micro and macro scale. Vanessa’s goal is to attain her PhD and further inspire other women to pursue higher education.
