Academic Feminist Activism on a Traditional STEM Campus: the Case of a Feminist Newspaper at MTU

Michigan Technological University Digital Commons @ Michigan Tech Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports 2015 Academic Feminist Activism on a Traditional STEM Campus: The Case of a Feminist Newspaper at MTU Katie Snyder Michigan Technological University, [email protected] Copyright 2015 Katie Snyder Recommended Citation Snyder, Katie, "Academic Feminist Activism on a Traditional STEM Campus: The Case of a Feminist Newspaper at MTU", Open Access Dissertation, Michigan Technological University, 2015. https://doi.org/10.37099/mtu.dc.etdr/47 Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/etdr Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons ACADEMIC FEMINIST ACTIVISM ON A TRADITIONAL STEM CAMPUS: THE CASE OF A FEMINIST NEWSPAPER AT MTU By Katie L. Snyder A DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In Rhetoric, Theory and Culture MICHIGAN TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY 2015 © 2015 Katie L. Snyder This dissertation has been approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Rhetoric, Theory and Culture. Department of Humanities Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Patricia Sotirin Committee Member: Dr. Ann Brady Committee Member: Dr. Elizabeth Flynn Committee Member: Dr. Audrey Mayer Department Chair: Dr. Ronald Strickland Table of Contents Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………... iv Abstract …………………………………………………………………………. v Chapter 1: “Texts are the primary medium of power” ………………………... 1 Chapter 2: Ruling Relations …………………………………………………… 33 Chapter 3: Ceiling Makers ……………………………………...……………... 53 Chapter 4: Glass Breakers ……………………………………………………... 87 Chapter 5: A radical liberal feminism for engineering education ……………. 121 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………. 141 iii Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the support of my family and committee members. Specifically, I am grateful to Chris, Sophia, and Eleanor for their love, laughter, and support through these long years of reading and writing. To my advisor, Patty Sotirin—I can’t thank you enough for your patient direction and excellent feedback through the months of slow progress and multiple iterations of this work. To my committee members, Beth Flynn, Ann Brady, and Audrey Mayer—thank you for your challenging questions and thoughtful critique. The opportunity to learn and study under the guidance of this advisor and these committee members—including their instruction in classes long before this project began—has been invaluable. iv Abstract This study addresses the problem of gender hostility on a STEM-focused university campus. I engage with current debates over the definition and purpose of feminism, in order to argue for the necessity of feminist activism in engineering education, with a particular focus on applications for Michigan Tech. Theoretically, I locate gender hostility in a long-running rejection of “the feminine” in STEM-based ways of knowing, curricula, and academic institutions. Drawing on Dorothy Smith’s conceptualization of “ruling relations,” I trace the discursive construction of femininity and the masculine/feminine dichotomy as seen in institutional forms, web pages, and student writing on social media. I consider the efficacy of undergraduate student activism on STEM-focused campuses in countering hostility toward the feminine. Specifically, in this project, I focus on the founding and accomplishments of a Michigan Tech feminist student newspaper: Beyond the Glass Ceiling. I set this newspaper within a history of student-initiated feminist publications at Michigan Tech, including The Technobabe Times and UNDER_WIRE. In chronicling the experiences of the students who wrote, designed, and edited the eponymous newspaper, I analyze how they understood and responded to institutionally embedded, textual, and contextual discourses about gender and feminism. My analysis admits the limitations but asserts the potential of undergraduate women’s counter-hegemonic struggle against the gendered ruling relations governing a STEM education. v In the conclusion, I argue for Martha Nussbaum’s philosophical articulation of justice and gender as a useful platform for developing strategies to address gender hostility in STEM education for the good of all students. vi Chapter 1 – “Texts are the primary medium of power” “The relations of ruling in our kind of society are mediated by texts, by words, numbers, and images on paper, in computers, or on TV and movies screens. Texts are the primary medium (though not the substance) of power” (Dorothy Smith, Texts 17). Introduction In the fall of 2009, I was assigned to teach two sections of HU 3120, Technical and Scientific Communication. That semester marked my second year in Michigan Technological University’s master’s program in Rhetoric and Technical Communication and the second time I had taught a course in technical communication. Most of the students were third and fourth-year engineers trying to satisfy humanities, arts, and social science (HASS) credit requirements. Also, most of the students were male. About ten years separated us in age, although I may have appeared younger than my age at the time. This course was not structured around daily lectures. Rather, I asked students to read and write outside of class and then come together to ask questions, participate in writing workshops, and have discussions. My approach was influenced by Paulo Freire's critique of “narrative” education—where students are “listening objects” and instructors are “speaking subjects” (52) —and by bell hooks’ assertion that everyone in the classroom matters and can participate in creating a communal space for learning (Teaching 8). This style of teaching works well if students are engaged in the material – it fails miserably when they are not engaged or when they refuse to read and write. At Michigan Tech, two-thirds of all students enroll to study engineering. The approach to engineering education, which evolved since its inception in the military context, tends to embrace a hierarchical model of education, where the instructor is the central fount of information, and students are peripheral receptacles (Hacker, Pleasure 1 60-63), often vying against one another. Engineering education encodes hierarchy as both masculine and as necessary to impart the “hard” or serious knowledge of the field. Gender hierarchy has long been a component of engineering education, such that women have been either excluded entirely, or funneled into positions with less authority, pay, and prestige (Layne 11-30). At the same time, considerations of social and personal circumstances, or anything not “calculable” (Bucciarelli 8), are not typically relevant to the engineering classroom. Sociologist Sally Hacker describes a kind of pleasure derived from the individual pursuit of success in the rigid structure of this context (Pleasure 42- 43). In her fieldwork as an engineering student, she discusses her experience of winning respect from others, and the sense of importance she felt when she turned down their offers to “go out” because she had to work on her “problem sets” (42). Still, much work has been done to modify this style of teaching and learning environment. Numerous journals for the study of engineering education have appeared in recent decades. Research in engineering education touts the value of asking students to work in groups on design projects, and from the beginning of their education, to better prepare them for the realities of work in a professional engineering firm (Bucciarelli 82- 83). As Hacker notes, engineering students sometimes work in groups because there was simply not enough time to finish the volume of coursework on one’s own. The group divided a set of problems between themselves and worked separately to find solutions (41-42). Thus, group work was mandated as a matter or survival, not as a matter of collegiality or collaborative learning. Recent revisions to the Michigan Tech curriculum include specific guidelines for providing students opportunities to learn and practice their communication skills. 2 Students have long participated in senior design and enterprise projects where they work in groups to perform original research or solve an engineering problem. The enterprise program specifically stresses the importance of developing “competence in written and oral communication” (“The Enterprise”). Unfortunately, my claim, to my technical communication students, that communication skills might be central to these students’ careers seemed to fall on deaf ears. Certainly we discussed ways that communication can be critically important in an engineering context. We studied communication failures in professional engineering settings, like the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. I also raised the issue of humanitarian engineering, where technology and design projects center on solving problems for people who suffer from poverty, environmental degradation, or forms of oppression. In one assignment, I asked students to write recommendation reports proposing long-term engineering projects designed to address problems of infrastructure (roads, sanitation, or energy, for example) in locations prone to earthquakes or other natural disasters. At universities across the globe, including Michigan Tech, engineering education increasingly is set in the context of humanitarian concerns (Amadei and Sandekian 84). Students here can participate in the Peace Corps Master’s Program, and in

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