Microaggression Experiences of Queer Science Students in Their Departments

: This study explored how the feelings of comfort and safety of LGBTQ+ undergraduate science majors in their departments at a mid-size Midwestern university affected their academic success. The literature provides a number of studies about LGBTQ+ STEM faculty, campus and departmental climate studies for LGBTQ+ students, and microaggressions experienced by a variety of students and faculty from historically underrepresented groups. There is little literature directly connecting campus climate work to STEM departments’ climates and the experiences of LGBTQ+ undergraduates. This study utilized a qualitative approach to explore the experiences of STEM majors who identified as LGBTQ+. A narrative approach to the research emphasized the voices of these marginalized students. Three participants participated in one interview per semester over two subsequent semesters for a total of six interviews, which were then coded using emergent themes. The most interesting findings were related to potential microaggressions experienced by the students, such as specific passive negative experiences or general negative feelings about expressing their identities. This study found that LGBTQ+ undergraduates in science departments may experience microaggressions because of their sexual orientation but may lack the language to describe these situations in detail or identify them as harmful. Thus, there is a need to examine and potentially improve science students’ language tools to better identify and describe these experiences.


Introduction
Increasing enrollment and retaining students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs has become an increasingly important priority for the United States (Chen & Soldner, 2013). This is an issue because historical trends have shown that during the 2000s, enrollment and attrition rates in STEM programs were consistent at 28% of undergraduate students enrolling in STEM majors and an attrition rate of 48% for those same students, where 28% of the students who originally enrolled left for a non-STEM field (Chen & Soldner, 2013), and recent data suggest that attrition rates may be beginning to decline (Hughes, 2018;National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2014).
One important group of students to gain or retain in STEM programs are students who are lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender, queer/questioning, pansexual, asexual/aromantic/agender, nonbinary, genderfluid/genderqueer, or other minority gender or sexual identities (LGBTQ+). It is widely accepted that LGBTQ+ students are likely an underrepresented minority at colleges; LGBTQ+ individuals make up somewhere between 9.6% and 11.3% of all 19-24year-olds in the United States (Green et al., 2019), and the college LGBTQ+ population is estimated at 3.5% (Hughes, 2018). Little has been done in STEM programs to encourage them to pursue degrees and careers in STEM fields (Stout & Wright, 2016;Vaccaro, 2012), such that 7% fewer LGBTQ+ students are retained in STEM programs compared to their heterosexual peers (Hughes, 2018).
Abstract: This study explored how the feelings of comfort and safety of LGBTQ+ undergraduate science majors in their departments at a mid-size Midwestern university affected their academic success. The literature provides a number of studies about LGBTQ+ STEM faculty, campus and departmental climate studies for LGBTQ+ students, and microaggressions experienced by a variety of students and faculty from historically underrepresented groups. There is little literature directly connecting campus climate work to STEM departments' climates and the experiences of LGBTQ+ undergraduates. This study utilized a qualitative approach to explore the experiences of STEM majors who identified as LGBTQ+. A narrative approach to the research emphasized the voices of these marginalized students. Three participants participated in one interview per semester over two subsequent semesters for a total of six interviews, which were then coded using emergent themes. The most interesting findings were related to potential microaggressions experienced by the students, such as specific passive negative experiences or general negative feelings about expressing their identities. This study found that LGBTQ+ undergraduates in science departments may experience microaggressions because of their sexual orientation but may lack the language to describe these situations in detail or identify them as harmful. Thus, there is a need to examine and potentially improve science students' language tools to better identify and describe these experiences.

Terminology
For the purpose of this study, comfort and safety are used as gauges of academic climate (Garvey et al., 2015). Within the body of work on campus climate discussed below, safety refers to both physical and emotional protection while also being encouraged to speak, learn, and grow, and comfort is thought of as feeling supported, understood, and accepted. Students who feel comfortable and safe in academic spaces are more likely to perform better (Garvey et al., 2015;Rania et al., 2014;Snapp et al., 2015;Theobald et al., 2017).
There are a number of other terms important to know in the context of this study, defined below with the assistance of the Trevor Project Resource Center (The Trevor Project, n.d.). The identities used by the participants in this study are also defined in this section.
• For the purposes of this study, academic success is defined in this study as students passing their required program classes and retention in the program from one semester to the next.
• Diversity is focused on creating opportunities for marginalized students to be in spaces • Inclusion involves putting in effort to keep students and make them feel welcome and part of the space • Queer is a common academic umbrella term to refer to non-heterosexual, nonheteroromantic, and non-cisgender identities, and it is also used as an individual identity. • Heteronormativity is the normalization of heterosexuality at the expense of all other sexualities.
• Cisgenderism is the expectation that all individuals are cisgender and discrimination against those who are not cisgender.
o Cisgender: Someone who identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth

Academic Success
The literature focusing on academic success is very broad and extensive. Based on previous research, it may be that academically successful students have some internal driving force, such as a love for learning, that motivates them to be successful (Fauria & Zellner, 2015), but it has also been noted that low grades in their major courses may lead some students to leave STEM (Ost, 2010). It has been demonstrated that positive mentor-mentee relationships may help with student success (Byars-Winston et al., 2015), and for queer students in particular, LGBTQ+ supportive policies, resource centers, and organizations are extremely beneficial to students' success (Pitcher et al., 2016). For science students in particular, it has been noted that developing a strong science identity is beneficial for their success in academic programs (Gonsalves et al., 2021;Le et al., 2019), especially for women, racial minority, and LGBTQ+ students (Ahlqvist et al., 2013;Chen et al., 2021;Eren, 2021;Rodriguez et al., 2017), and increased academic success leads to a positive and more developed science identity (Aschbacher et al., 2010).

Queer in Science
Many science and engineering departments have an implicit "don't ask/don't tell" policy regarding gender and sexual identities (Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009;Sadika et al., 2020). This policy reflects the expectation that science is an identity-neutral space, or a space where a person's identity seemingly has no effect on the situation, but this neglects the normalization of heterosexuality and cisgender identities within science spaces Yoder & Mattheis, 2016 LGBTQ+ identities, and they may struggle to identify or articulate their experiences in a significant way (Cooper & Brownell, 2016 et al., 2007;Woodford, Chonody, et al., 2015). For LGBTQ+ people, microaggressions may appear in the form of homophobia or other types of discrimination because of someone's specific sexuality or gender identity. These may include the "don't ask/don't tell" policies discussed in the section above (Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009;Sadika et al., 2020), the heterosexist and cisgenderist assumption that science represents an identity-neutral space (Yoder & Mattheis, 2016), or jokes that either imply or outright state the expected roles of men and women in relationships or workplaces (Sue, 2010). Everyday language can be another example, such as assuming coworkers, peers, or friends have a significant other of a different gender (i.e., using "boyfriend," "girlfriend," "wife," or "husband" instead of gender neutral "partner" or "spouse") (Sue, 2010). While these may not seem harmful, the accumulation of many of these small interactions every day over weeks, months, or years can cause significant mental distress or poor physical health (Lange et al., 2019;Sue, 2010;Woodford et al., 2012;Woodford, Han, et al., 2014;Woodford, Kulick, et al., 2014;Woodford, Weber, et al., 2018), with negative experiences leading students to leave STEM programs (Hughes, 2018).
When looking at microaggressions, it may be important to see how identities intersect using the concept of intersectionality, originally described by Crenshaw (1991)  Intersectionality has also been used to better understand microaggressions faced by individuals with differing but connected marginalized identities (Sadika et al., 2020). In queer communities, white gay cisgender men are generally prioritized, and these communities may disadvantage those who are transgender, people of color, or those of other sexualities (Sadika et al., 2020). Because of this, the types of microaggressions against an individual may change depending on whether they are inside or outside of the queer community (Roffee & Waling, 2016). Whatever the type, microaggressions may lead to individuals leaving their program of study or career, experiencing negative mental health outcomes, or experiencing physical illness (Seelman et al., 2017;Woodford, Weber, et al., 2018).

Research Question
While some work has been done looking at STEM LGBTQ+ faculty (Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009;Patridge et al., 2014;Vaccaro, 2012), little has been done in specific STEM fields and less has been done looking at queer STEM students, although some recent studies are starting to fill that gap (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Friedensen et al., 2021;Miller et al., 2019;Stout & Wright, 2016;Vaccaro et al., 2021). Almost no work has been done on LGBTQ+ students in particular majors (Traxler et al., 2016)

Methodology Researcher Positionality
The first author is a queer nonbinary woman

Theoretical Frameworks
This project is situated within two theoretical frameworks. The first is feminist standpoint theory, which is "a way of empowering oppressed groups, of valuing their experiences" (Harding, 2004, p. 2). It can be seen as both a methodology and an epistemology (Harding, 2004). In the context of this study, feminist standpoint theory was used to situate the stories of the participants at the very front of this study, using their words when creating narratives and codes and focusing on their experiences as part of a whole story.
Queer theory was also utilized to think critically about how the participants' queer identities intersected with the research and in other aspects of data analysis. The concept of one, unified "queer theory" does not exist by the very nature of queer theory, because it is a way of knowledge-making that is inherently fluid and multifaceted (Browne & Nash, 2016;McCann & Monaghan, 2020;Schilt et al., 2018), and researchers bring instead bring a queer theoretical prospective to methods (Brim & Ghaziani, 2016).
While this may be seen as a hindrance in some circumstances, it opens up unique avenues of exploration when considering the lived experiences of marginalized individuals. Queer theory recognizes that heterosexism and discrimination against queer people are systemic in society, which makes it necessary not to "condone heteronormative and cissexist male approaches as the only methods of inquiry" (Nadal, 2016, p. 301). It is a critical theory about the intersection of identity and power (Gunckel, 2009), which pushed the first author to consider her relationship with the participants as part of the data analysis. Queer theory provides scaffolding for analysis by encouraging the use of transgressive practices to look for deeper, unusual connections (Browne & Nash, 2016, p. 7). For example, it has been used in education research to reexamine "institutions and processes that limit possible identities, promote binary constructions, and naturalize heteronormativity" (Gunckel, 2009, p. 65), and to think critically about education both as it is and as it could be (Gunckel, 2009). Queer theory has been underutilized in research about the experiences and feelings of LGBTQ+ individuals in STEM fields (Jennings et al., 2020;Lange et al., 2019).
Within this study, queer theory was used as a lens to examine participants' experiences outside of the expectation that heterosexuality is the "norm" and other sexualities as deviant or "other" (Browne & Nash, 2016), normalizing their identities and situating their sexualities within more complex situations (McCann, 2016). It has been used as a way of meaning-making between the existing bodies of literature and the expressed perceptions and feelings of the participants.

Research Design
The research design originally utilized a solely narrative approach, but this was adapted to include a case study approach as well to reflect the small number of participants. A narrative case study approach allowed each participant's experiences to be analyzed individually before looking for cross-case comparisons, and feminist standpoint theory was utilized when building each participant's narrative.
Feminist standpoint theory was the sole original framework in the study design, but when the literature was re-examined after the first round of analysis, queer theory was found to have a unique and helpful lens for additional analysis and in reframing the study as a narrative-case study mix.
This study served as an exploratory, pilot study to lay the groundwork prior to embarking on the process to create and defend a dissertation proposal. Because of this, the study was purposefully designed to recruit participants from only one university and an IRB modification to expand this was not sought to continue to meet the timeline of the first author's graduate program.

Data Collection
The data collection process began after IRB approval, and the original plan was to recruit via a midsize

Participants
The study ultimately ended up with three participants, which included one cisgender gay man with an engineering major and minors in physics and math, one cisgender bisexual woman with a biochemistry major, and one cisgender gay woman with a geology major. It is important to note that no gender nonconforming individuals participated in this study.
All three participants were in their 20s, and no racial or ethnic information was collected from them.

Data Analysis and Trustworthiness
After transcription of the interviews by the first author, data analysis started with each participant's interviews being analyzed individually through the construction of narratives by the first author, summaries of which are presented below in Findings, and the interviews and narratives were analyzed as part of each participant's case by the first author. A case study format was utilized to allow for a more holistic focus on their voices and their individual stories, which could then be analyzed on a cross-case basis.
Emergent coding was used so as not to bias the results initially, and the major codes in common across two or more participants included academic success, comfort, safety, negative experiences, passive experiences, and identity hiding. The common emergent themes from each interview were used for deeper critical thinking about the case studies.
In qualitative work, trustworthiness is the answer to quantitative validity (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016

Academic Success, Safety, and Comfort
While all three participants did include grades in some way in their personal definitions of academic success, Ann and Liv both described academic success as related to how much knowledge they had gained, and Zed felt less academically supported than either Liv or Ann, noting "a disconnect between the student governments and the administration and individual departments." Zed described her department as being less organized and full of miscommunications between students, faculty, and staff, whereas both Liv and Ann considered their departments to be "excellent" (Ann) and "absolutely" supportive (Liv).
However, Ann did say she felt less supported by the university compared to her department, saying, "certain processes are more difficult than they need to be." In varying contexts and to different degrees, all three participants felt they could be themselves on campus, which is one way to explore feelings of comfort. Zed and Ann both gave qualifying answers, Zed saying "75% of the time" and Ann saying "most of the time," when asked about being themselves, and Zed later added, "I don't know whether my identity will ever get to be an actual part of myself." Liv, on the other hand, felt as though he could be himself, and "I also feel like being with these people is also helping me grow and to be a better self."

Microaggressions
Zed, Liv, and Ann all identified experiences that can be described as microaggressions throughout their interviews, but it seemed they lacked the language to truly express these experiences in detail. All three participants gave "I'm not sure" or "I don't know" as responses when asked for more elaboration about their discomfort, which is consistent with the findings of Cooper & Brownell (2016). These potential microaggressions became the focus of analysis because of the subtle ways each participant talked about their experiences.
Ann noted she had had some passive negative experiences in her department, nothing she thought was significant enough to remember details about but which left a lingering feeling of unease.
Microaggressions are brief interactions and usually unconsciously done (Sue, 2010), but making another person feel uncomfortable because of their identity is still a microaggression and may cause at the very least harm to a working relationship between students or between student and professor. Additionally, Liv thought of engineering as an identity-neutral space, where "teachers look at me as how well I'm performing as opposed to who I am." As discussed in the introduction, this is a heterosexist microaggression where a student's marginalized identity is erased in an education space, which may unintentionally other those who are not heterosexual. Zed felt "as if I need to work harder or be better in order to get to the same places," a common feeling among queer students, and reflected a situation where Zed felt othered by her peers, even though they did not know of her sexual identity. This may represent a heterosexist environmental microaggression within her department spaces, a type of microaggression called a microinvalidation (Sue, 2010). Zed's allusion above to feeling uncomfortable with some faculty in the department is another example of how environmental microaggressions may impact queer students and deter them from engaging in major spaces.
In particular, Ann and Zed both noted feeling it was necessary to conceal their identities in some instances, which may be a response to invisible heterosexism that promotes heteronormative culture and behaviors (Sue, 2010) and has been recorded within science spaces .

Discussion and Implications
This study sought to understand how feelings of comfort and safety affected the academic success of queer science major undergraduates. Most notably, the three participants made no direct connections between their sexual identities and their academic success or persistence within their majors, which provided no insights in answer to the research question. Instead, microaggression experiences common in the literature came out in the interviews and narratives, and the queer theory framework allowed the authors to "queer" the research methods, or to think outside the bounds of traditional qualitative work and "to embrace multiplicity, misalignments, and silences" (Brim & Ghaziani, 2016, p. 17 When asked about the support being provided by their departments, all three participants brought up only academic support, which demonstrates a continued disconnect between the personal and academic spheres of their lives. Through a queer theory lens, the subtle language used by the participants pointed in a different direction and even the silences suggested a different interpretation of the participants' disconnect between sexuality and academic success (Brim & Ghaziani, 2016 (Crosby, 1984), or even system justification theory, where they think of the system as established and so it is unnecessary to involve identities not already in the space, such as sexuality (Jost & Hunyady, 2003). This appeared in Liv's discussion of his personal strength against a homophobic culture growing up, in Ann brushing off the uncomfortable passive experiences she had with classmates and professors, and in Zed's discomfort at the thought of coming out to classmates. It may even be that, by perceiving science as an identity-neutral space, the participants could be avoiding negative effects from recognizing the inequality in these spaces (Suppes et al., 2019). It is worth noting that only one of the participants was a man, and Liv described the fewest experiences that could be classified as microaggressions, which may be an example of male privilege within STEM spaces (Dancy et al., 2020).
These potential approaches could be connected to the passive negative experiences Ann and Zed mentioned in their interviews. However, without further interviews or follow-up, it is impossible to say for certain.
An implication of this work comes back to the language used by participants. In exploring microaggression literature after analyzing Ann's description of minimal or passive negative experiences and Zed's concerns about her ability to be authentic in future biochemistry workplaces, it became apparent that these students may lack the knowledge to identify their experiences as harmful or the language to describe their experiences in meaningful ways, which reflects the experiences of queer biology students asked to describe their experiences in another study (Cooper & Brownell, 2016). Another possibility is desensitization to these experiences, which may be built up over a lifetime of seeing heterosexism in daily interactions from both heterosexual and nonheterosexual individuals (Dessel et al., 2017;Woodford et al., 2012;Woodford, Han, et al., 2014;Woodford, Kulick, et al., 2014), which may apply to what Liv described above about gaining personal strength from the discrimination he experienced growing up. Microaggressions have become more commonly explored in queer research but remain underexplored for STEM queer students, and the language involved in understanding micro-aggressive experiences also seems to be under-explored.

Conclusion and Limitations
At their current university, the participants generally did not feel uncomfortable in their departments, and none of the participants identified feeling unsafe. They did not see their identities as impacting their coursework or success. Empowering these students with language may help researchers and educators better understand the problem and hopefully work to better address it.