Guiding Research Question: How do institutions of higher education retain minoritized women in STEM pathways?

Research Thread 1: Sub-Saharan African Women in Engineering Higher Education

Dr. Hailu’s primary research thread, titled “The Experiences of Sub-Saharan African Women in Engineering Higher Education,” identifies the salient patterns, themes, and trends in engineering that encourage women to persist in their majors. Using phenomenological methods, quantitative survey methods, and systematic literature reviews, she examines what strategies high-achieving students use to navigate gendered learning environments and how they have leveraged gender-sensitive initiatives implemented by the Ministries of Education in Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya.

Research Thread 2: Black Immigrants and Refugees in U.S. STEM Higher Education

Dr. Hailu’s secondary research thread titled, “The Trajectories of Black Immigrants and Refugees in U.S. STEM Higher Education,” focuses on the politicized, racialized, and gendered dimensions of presumably objective disciplines. This work relies on critical discourse analysis, case studies, and survey instruments to better understand how immigrants and refugees use their cultural epistemologies to gain degrees in science, engineering, and mathematics fields. She focuses on STEM majors in this research thread because of this discipline’s rising prominence in the U.S. job market.

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