But How Do You Know? Black Graduate Students' Religious and Scientific Ways of Knowing

• In Event: Thursday Roundtable Session 9:00 am
  In Roundtable Session: Learning From Black Students Across Higher Education (Table 30)

Abstract

The science community has a long standing reputation for being unfriendly to religion. In graduate school, Christian students report that religion is stigmatized within the science community, leading some to conceal their religious identity. Notwithstanding, religion has been shown to inform numerous outcomes and experiences for Black students. Particularly among Black STEM students, religion and religious communities at times facilitate engagement and serve as a vital source of support towards persistence. However, research about the role of religion in Black STEM students’ experiences remains understudied, with few exceptions (Burt et al., 2019; Roberts, 2018). Our project examines how Black graduate students navigate the relationships between religion and science to illuminate previously understudied factors that might influence participation in STEM.

Authors

• Keon M. McGuire, North Carolina State University

• Julie J. Park, University of Maryland

• Robert Terry Palmer, Howard University

• Elizabeth Barnes, Middle Tennessee State University

• Angela Google, University of Rhode Island

• Vaughn I. Parham, University of Maryland

• Chloe Bowen, Middle Tennessee State University