Career development is a cornerstone of the Foundation’s approach to grantmaking. One way we do this is through investing in efforts that foster supportive environments for scholars from groups that remain underrepresented in higher education to broaden their research skills and explore rigorous, cutting-edge methodologies.
Two recent grantees have cultivated intellectual communities of practice to equip scholars with training in critical research methods. In convening faculty to learn with each other, these communities of practice play a vital role in scholars’ career development, expanding their expertise, providing mentoring and networking opportunities, and strengthening the academic pipeline.
The Intersectional Qualitative Research Methods Institute (IQRMI), based at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at the Ohio State University, strives to close the methodological skill and social capital gaps among early-career researchers in four areas: 1) youth, trauma, violence, justice and race; 2) families and communities at risk; 3) educational pathways from K-20; and 4) health disparities and equity. Through a week-long institute held each June, IQRMI brings together early-career faculty from across the nation to engage with intersectional research methods.
The Institute in Critical Quantitative, Computational, and Mixed Methodologies (ICQCM), based at Johns Hopkins University, aims to advance the presence of scholars of color among those using data science methodologies. ICQCM provides in-person and virtual training in critical quantitative methods to scholars doing research about or with Black, Indigenous, and Latina/o/x populations, particularly those at Minority-Serving Institutions, with a focus on equity and STEM education.
Kirwan Institute executive director Ange-Marie Hancock and ICQCM director Ebony McGee shared insights about their respective institutes, how the institutes formulated their theory of change, and their approach to career development. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Provide a brief overview of your institute’s work and goals
Ange-Marie Hancock: IQRMI was started 10 years ago by Dr. Ruth Enid Zambrana. The idea was there are faculty, primarily but not exclusively faculty from underrepresented populations, who want to use empirical methods associated with the theory of intersectionality but who don’t necessarily have the support at their individual universities because there weren’t enough faculty who were similarly situated. The IQRMI experience is really grounded in building an intensive intellectual community, an intensive engagement with intersectional research methods, and then intensive mentoring and peer networking.
The way we create that intellectual community of practice in such a short window of time is we build a curriculum that has four components. We do professional socialization panels that talk about doing community-engaged research, grant writing, managing your time, and developing [your] portfolio of work. The second component is research lectures. We’re bringing in the top scholars in intersectionality from around the country to help early-career faculty both get their feet wet but also develop a budding expertise in intersectional research methods.
The third and the fourth aspects are what I like to call IQRMI’s secret sauce. We admit faculty and early career scholars to the Institute in substantive or content-based cohorts who participate in a daily morning writing group session [together]. They can spend as much time [as they want] in this writing group later in the day as well, because the purpose of the institute is to make sure that people are making progress on their research. The fourth and final aspect of the Institute are what we call faculty walkabouts. Each individual participant can invite any member of the IQRMI faculty, regardless of whether they’re in the same kind of substantive area of expertise or not, to meet. We call it a walkabout because people literally go for a walk around campus to discuss their questions about their research projects.
The reason we think that is the secret sauce is that research is still the coin of the realm in academia for the faculty who come to this institute. So, we want to make sure that they have dedicated time to actually work on their research. But of course, research does not happen in a vacuum, and it’s not just one individual alone in terms of how ideas get really fleshed out and honed. We think the connection with faculty is important for networking and mentoring, but it’s most important as an intellectual endeavor as well, for people to ask deep and robust questions about the research project that perhaps faculty are not being asked at their home institutions, because there aren’t folks who are experts in intersectionality, or experts in intersectional research methods, to ask those questions.
Ebony McGee: ICQMI was founded in 2019. Odis Johnson, Ezekiel Dixon- Román and I were at an American Educational Research Association conference, and we were talking about the doctoral candidates who were applying for a fellowship, and how few of the doctoral students of color were using really complex quantitative designs. They were mostly doing qual designs. We thought, we believe in the power of qualitative research, but we know the larger scientific community also admires quantitative methods. We didn’t want those scholars to be on the sidelines, not because their research wasn’t beneficial or solid, but just because they’re using a method that wasn’t the gold standard of the methodologies that we use in educational places and spaces. We also saw that the STEM workforce could use more data science as they seek to broaden the participation of those underrepresented groups, seeking more complexity of what it means to be a Black or Brown or minoritized or disabled engineer.
One of the things we wanted to do was focus on that pipeline between the transition of being a doctoral student to becoming faculty, because we saw we were losing folks within that transitional phase. We were also concerned with junior faculty being able to use critical quantitative methodology and still gain tenure and be seen as capable and brilliant and smart as everyone else in the field. Those are the two populations that we were most concerned with.
Walk us through your institute’s theory of change. How did you develop it?
AMH: The theory of change was developed by Dr. Zambrana 10 years ago and refined over the past 10 years. IQRMI’s theory of change, that faculty who do not have the support once they get the support will stay in academia and will succeed, has led to the success of 49 IQRMI participants getting tenure across the county. Our theory of change is, based on Dr. Zambrana’s book, “Toxic Ivory Towers,” which documents that faculty who come from underrepresented groups, especially if they’re working in institutions where there are either not a lot of resources for them or do not receive a lot of support. As well, minority serving institutions often do not have the resources to help faculty and early-career scholars like postdocs with their research.
Our theory of change is really focused on making sure that we can build the networks that are automatically accessible to faculty or early-career scholars in better resourced institutions, or who come from fully represented populations and communities.
Our theory of change is really focused on making sure that we can build the networks that are automatically accessible to faculty or early-career scholars in better resourced institutions, or who come from fully represented populations and communities. It’s important that we think about it in terms of building an intellectual community of practice. That’s the language that we use when we talk about the institute because we don’t think that this should just be, come for a week and then never connect with folks again. We encourage lots of time spent socially in the institute. Breakfast and lunch we have in community, and every session is “mandatory.” Not because we’re trying to be draconian, but because we’re trying to make sure that people can [make] those bonds, that six months from now, two years from now, people will still be able to connect back to other participants and have that ongoing intellectual community of practice. It’s not just, “Can you give me feedback [this] week?” from a peer participant, but “Hey, I’m working on this research article, and I just need another set of eyes.” This might be 18 months or two years later, after the project has gone to completion. That’s the reason why we want to make sure that we’re building that intensive community.
EM: ICQCM’s theory of change is the central, driving force behind every aspect of its implementation and strategy. The theory posits that by equipping underrepresented scholars (Latina/o/x, Indigenous, and Black) with critical quantitative, computational, and mixed methodologies (QCM) within a culturally responsive and supportive community, these scholars will transform STEM and social science research. This transformation leads to more equitable knowledge production, diversifies the pool of funded principal investigators, and ultimately challenges systemic inequities in academia and society.
ICQCM strategically recruits scholars who are conducting research about or with Black, Indigenous, and Latina/o/x populations, including those working at Minority-Serving Institutions. The demographic data of cohorts (e.g., 59% African American in the NSF cohort) is not an accident; it’s a direct implementation of the theory. The core mission is to advance PIs who do research about or with marginalized communities and this mission dictates participant selection. The program addresses the maldistribution of method specialization across racial groups by building a pipeline of critical methodologists from these communities. Training is not just technical. It integrates Critical Race Theory, Afrofuturism, Indigenous epistemologies, and critiques of colonial science. Methods are taught through a lens of power, racism, and racial justice (e.g., Critical Measurement, Indigenous Data Analysis). The theory demands moving beyond “neutral” data science. The strategy is to cultivate a critical positionality so scholars can identify the misuse of QCM and harness its transformative potential for their communities.
ICQCM builds a Community of Practice with Institute Fellows (experts of color), personal methods coaches, and peer networks. It emphasizes cultural congruence between instructors and learners. ICQCM’s theory of change is its blueprint. It transforms a standard methods training program into a critical intervention. Every strategic choice—from who is recruited, to what is taught, to how community is built, to what success looks like—flows from the foundational belief that pairing advanced methodological training with critical theory and community support will empower a generation of scholars to produce more equitable science. The current challenge is navigating a changing policy landscape while refusing to abandon this transformative, but now riskier, core theory.
What role do communities of practice play in disrupting barriers for researchers from underrepresented backgrounds and strengthening the academic pipeline?
AMH: There’s a body of research about intellectual communities of practice as being one of the keys to advancing scientific knowledge. Connecting folks with [others] who are doing this work does improve the quality of research and the quality of scientific knowledge. Intellectual communities of practice are important for the researchers themselves, but they are also important for the development of strong social science. But [it’s] also preserving what has often been called the leaky pipeline. Often, what will happen with researchers, is that they will start in academia, but then lack supports, or lack being able to find an intellectual community of practice. It doesn’t have to be on their campus—that’s why we make our [institute] national—but if they can’t find an intellectual community of practice, they are more likely to step out of the academic pipeline. That’s not just about whether or not they get tenure, because often the stepping out of the pipeline happens well before that. It’s during the first or second year, when they decide that they want to go work in industry, or they decide that they don’t want to be in a research institution [and] want to go to a teaching college.
Since that is the case, these kinds of institutes where we can build intellectual communities of practice are more important than ever, because we want to make sure not only that researchers are still on the pipeline and that they are able to build those networks and intellectual communities for themselves, but also because this kind of research is inherently work that has not been part of the traditional academic body of knowledge. Intersectionality as a theory, intersectionality as a body of research, has come from the bottom up, as opposed to being a top-down theory that was produced by elites.
EM: There are still a lot of the old guard, the epistemic marginalization when it comes to methodology. What we were hearing from critical quantitative researchers, so researchers who were already doing this work, is that their work was getting dismissed or minimized or sidelined or seen as less than because they use these rigorous, complex, multi-dimensional critical framings. We wanted to have a place to say, not only is this type of research welcome, [but] this is the type of research that is really going to make fundamental changes when it comes to that methodological marginalization that many Black, Brown, and other scholars focused on these communities face.
“Pairing advanced methodological training with critical theory and community support will empower a generation of scholars to produce more equitable science.”
We wanted to acknowledge that there is a home. There is a place for critical quantitative, computational, and mixed-methods research. We wanted to have a guide [on] how to do this with the level of fidelity that is needed to really substantiate this. Research is critical. It’s not just critical because you have Black people, it’s critical because of your understanding of the social context of education, your understanding of how structural racism operationalizes itself in educational context, your methodology is a robust methodology that gets at maybe gender or the poverty levels of the neighborhood—all kind of metrics that help to paint a fuller picture of the experiences, ideologies, values, the outcomes that some folks are having within these environments.
How would you describe your institute’s approach to career development?
AMH: There are a couple of different words I would use to describe our approach to career development. The first is transparency. All of our faculty, all of our speakers who come to the institute, understand that this is a space where they are expected to be as transparent as possible about their own journeys, because that creates a safe space for the participants to feel like they can ask the questions that they’re perhaps uncomfortable asking on their home campuses. We have had, for example, among our speakers, people who are deans, people who have been on the tenure track, gotten off the tenure track. We have folks who are academic leadership staff. We are sharing the ways in which leadership or grant writing or mentoring can take place. For example, Dr. Zambrana has had panels with one of her mentees. You have mentor and mentee talking about the relationship from each of their perspectives and allowing participants to then ask questions about how that works. Then we also do an off the record conversation with all the faculty. We typically do it at a faculty member’s home, where participants are able to ask all the questions that you’ve ever wanted to ask about what it means to be a faculty member in your context but were afraid to ask.
The second term I would use besides transparency is courage. It takes a lot of courage, particularly at this moment in our history, to commit to doing this kind of research and to be able to come to this kind of Institute. Folks are certainly welcome to come and we provide a welcoming space for them, but they also need to understand that this is a courageous or a brave space that they’re entering. They are going to get feedback that maybe they’ve never gotten before, because they’re talking to experts [in intersectionality]. You’re going to get robust, engaged, and supportive feedback on your research, but also on your career path.
The third and final term I would use is compassionate. We have a lot of compassion for the ways in which our participants are coming to the space. Not only have we shifted and changed certain things over time to be responsive to their feedback, but we also understand that people may be sharing things that are very, very difficult to share. We want to make sure that even though we want people to be brave and they might hear something that’s difficult to hear, we want to deliver that information with the kind of compassion for where they are coming from.
EM: [The Institute’s summit] is driven by the student scholars that we have. When we did the first summit, we were thoughtful and talked to the folks that we recruited and asked them what kinds of sessions they wanted. What rose to the top are a few things: They wanted to understand what is the “critical” in critical quantitative, mixed-methods, [and] computational methodology. They wanted to know that they have a courageous space in which to do this research with other folks who are also grappling with this sort of third space that we have in the methodological realm of the academy. You have strict qualitative researchers, strict quantitative researchers, and maybe a little tangential mixed-methods, but folks were not using criticality within those places and spaces, so they wanted a courageous space to do that. The third thing they wanted [to know] is, how is this going to impact my career? Both for the positive, but even possibly, how do I set myself up for the naysayers who are probably going to say this work is too critical, it’s focused too much on structural racism? We have an online portal, [and] a few months ago they wanted to understand how to secure a tenure track job in this political environment. [For example], do they take things off their resume? It really got down to the nitty gritty, and I was able to devise an hour video trying to respond to some of these concerns.
We take career development very seriously. We’re not just about being critical for issues of social justice or racial activism—we want people to thrive in the academy. Right now, we have an academy where a person can go through years [of] training, from undergrad to masters to PhD, and never see another Black or Brown professor at the front of the podium. We think that is a shame. So, we are always focused on how do we improve faculty experiences? Because we know faculty do dynamic research. We know faculty serve as mentors. Faculty can make a difference. We have always been steadfast and focused on trying to retain faculty of color who research our communities, and secondly, faculty of all colors whose research is about or with Black, Indigenous, and Latina/o/x populations and who understand the experiences, ideologies, and values of those who are most minoritized, not simply for their benefit but for the benefit of us all.
