Celebrating Academic Successes – Dr Mojdeh Mardani

Mojdeh’s Phd thesis is titled: 

Examining the Unique Experiences of Underrepresented Minority STEM Faculty: How Discrimination, Microaggression, and Allyship Relate to Sense of Relatedness, Motivation, and Perceived Success 

 You can read the abstract from Mojdeh’s thesis paper here: 

Results from empirical studies reveal underrepresented minority, URM, university faculty experience biases, discrimination, and affiliated stress that can impact multiple aspects of their work such as research performance (Fisher et al., 2019; O’Meara et al., 2020; Stolzenberg et al., 2019; Stupnisky et al., 2015), isolation, and lessened relatedness to colleagues (Zambrana et al., 2017; 2021), which may affect their motivation to conduct research. This dissertation is a collection of three separate but complementary research studies examining the effects of various forms of discrimination and the role of allyship in shaping the motivation of URM faculty members to engage in research, their perception of success, and their sense of relatedness to both their colleagues and their workplace. The first study explored the impact of workplace discrimination. The second study examined the consequences of experiencing microaggression. In the third study, two survey scales were created to capture the perspective of URM population on allyship.  These scales were subsequently employed to investigate the possible influence of allyship on URM’s relationship with colleagues and their workplace, perceived success, and motivation to engage in research. The research findings explored the significance of the experiences of URM faculty and contributed to the research literature on URM faculty development, research success, and motivation.