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With constantly changing political landscapes affecting the ability of college students with minoritized identities of sexuality and/or gender (MIoSG; Vaccaro et al., 2015) to thrive on campus, higher educators need to understand student reported stressors to design more inclusive learning environments. Building from minority stress theory and using data from a grounded theory study with 56 collegiate STEM students with MIoSG, this paper documents stressors that students reported as contributing to diminished wellbeing. We used constant comparative grounded theory analysis to identify stressors shared by all participants, which included lack of belonging and invisibility in competitive STEM cultures as well as exclusionary interactions with STEM peers. Recommendations include the design and delivery of holistic education and support services on campus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This quantitative, non-experimental study explored the relationship between the features of math and science teachers' preparation programs and their graduates' instructional rigor and persistence in teaching. Five math and science teacher preparation programs from across the United States were examined. Six sets of instructional tasks were collected from forty-six recent graduates of these programs to provide insights into novices' instructional rigor, and employment data were collected for thirty-seven of these graduates three to eight years after graduation. Regardless of the program's features, all teachers could design and implement instruction with moderate to high rigor. However, this ability was not the norm. Mixed-effect models suggest the strongest evidence between degree types (bachelor versus post-bachelor) was related to teachers' persistence: novices from graduate programs were more likely to persist in the work. However, no program feature was strongly associated with instructional rigor. Further research is needed to determine if the differences we found in teacher persistence are due to the nature of applicants drawn to particular programs (undergraduate versus graduate) or the program's structure. Future research is also needed to explore the influence of instructional context (i.e., district, school, and department norms for instruction) on math and science teachers' instructional rigor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]