Positioned in the Middle: Exploring Affordances for Underrepresented Engineering Students in a Cross-Age Engineering Research Experience Team

Enrollment in engineering programs by women and minority students has steadily decreased in recent years. Extending participation in programs for Research Experience Undergraduates (REU) to underqualified candidates may help recruit and retain students to engineering if the students are positioned in research teams in ways that leverage the assets they do have. This paper uses positioning theory as a lens to understand how two women not selected as applicants in an REU program identify as engineers as they participate in a research project team as part of a REU program. Middle placement in a cross-age team expanded the ways these women could position themselves, and those positionings appear to influence their contributions and engineering identity.