*Note* This scheduling program was not designed by folks who do a lot with APA Style and unfortunately it defaults to listing authors in alphabetical order. We cannot fix this for this online schedule, but the author orders are posted in the order submitted in the printed program available via pdf here.
My dissertation topic is rooted in my own experiences as a feminist, bisexual White woman in a graduate program. As I reviewed the literature, I began with women, trying to find research that suggested that women still were experiencing sexism while in their graduate programs. This proved somewhat difficult and I was surprised to find that there was not as much recent evidence as I had anticipated. I began to explore other “differences”, including race, ethnicity, international students, age, class, and motherhood. While I found some evidence of prejudice and discrimination within some studies (for example, Beoku-Betts, 2004; González, 2007), it was generally buried in the research, hidden in the measures the researchers gave, and not discussed at length in the articles. I found this interesting because my experiences and so many stories from other graduate students did not support these minor mentions and brief discussions of discrimination in academia. When I turned to look for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered students’ experiences in graduate school, I found two older dissertations that discussed gay and lesbians students’ experiences. I found this distressing. I wanted to know women graduate students’ stories and I believe there is a need within the literature to directly address and share narratives about graduate students’ experiences with prejudice and discrimination. I would like to gather graduate students for a discussion about the prejudice and discrimination that they experienced in graduate school. Having this discussion allows us to support each other and network.
