Building and breaching boundaries: An intersectional coherent group approach to advancing women faculty in engineering

This paper draws on data from the NSF ADVANCE-funded LATTICE program (Launching Academics on the Tenure-Track: an Intentional Community in Engineering) to examine how an interdisciplinary and racially/ethnically diverse group of women worked across different social and professional identities to organize a workshop for early-career women faculty in Engineering and Computer Science. Through participatory action research, we elucidate the social dynamics and power relations involved in forming a coherent group identity, and the boundaries we build and breach to advance a social/intellectual movement aimed at broadening participation in engineering disciplines. We illuminate the strategies of organizers to provide guidelines for others who work across, with, and through various dimensions of difference in social, political, professional, and cultural identities.