”Tricks of the Trade”: Sharing the Experiences of Queer and Trans Graduate Students

Engineering, STEM, and academia have taken strides towards diversity, equity, and inclusion in the past decade.While progress has been made there is still ways to go.This “Tricks of the Trade” research paper describes a student-led panel that examined the experiences of queer academics and graduate students within several STEM fields in a large public research institution in the Eastern United States.The panel was intended to be a space for graduate students in the 2SLGBTQIA community to share with administrators, faculty, and staff their experiences and those of fellow graduate students in the college/institution.The panelists discussed whether they have faced issues navigating multiple identities within academic spaces.To make queer and trans students feel more welcome, they also discussed the changes that would make them feel more welcome and included within academia and their department(s) (cultural and/or infrastructural changes).They also provided advice and recommendations to future queer and trans graduate students.The panel received overwhelmingly positive feedback, and the audience expressed their willingness and enthusiasm to learn and support queer and trans graduate students.Overall, the lessons learned from the Queer and Trans Graduate Students Panel are as follows: 1) Provided an opportunity to inform about the specific obstacles that many queer and trans students experience in graduate education.2) Contributed to the knowledge of designing, facilitating, and conducting a student experiences panel that helps administrators and educators realize connections between student experiences/identities and various aspects of the academic graduate environment.3) Provided suggestions to improve the experiences of queer and trans graduate students in STEM.