LGBTQ Students' Campus Climate Perceptions Across Academic Disciplines

Abstract

LGBTQ Students' Campus Climate Perceptions Across Academic Disciplines Jason C. Garvey (bio), Elizabeth Niehaus (bio), and Max Cordes Galbraith (bio) Academic disciplines are important contexts for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) students' experiences and greatly affect their collegiate journeys (Garvey & Dolan, 2021). Yet, LGBTQ students must often navigate hostile learning environments where they may be silenced, tokenized, or underrepresented in curricula (Atteberry-Ash et al., 2019; Forbes, 2020; Garvey et al., 2015). Negative classroom environments can lead to disengagement (Woodford & Kulick, 2015), reduced health and wellness (Cech & Rothwell, 2018), and a higher likelihood of leaving campus among LGBTQ collegians (Tetreault et al., 2013). Conversely, positive relationships with faculty promote academic and social integration (Woodford & Kulick, 2015) and make LGBTQ students feel validated and supported (Linley et al., 2016). Given the vastly different learning environments across academic disciplines, including faculty representation, pedagogy, and content, there is a pressing need to understand how LGBTQ undergraduate students may experience campus climate differently across college majors (Forbes, 2020; Ueno et al., 2023). Yet, researchers have not extensively examined how LGBTQ students may experience campus-wide environmental influences differently depending on their academic disciplines. As such, the purpose of our study is to explore the relationships among college majors, academic environments, and perceptions of campus climate for LGBTQ students. Our intended audience is primarily campus administrators, given their positional and political power to enact positive systemic change across the institution for LGBTQ students. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Campus climate describes "the cumulative attitudes, behaviors, and standards of employees and students concerning access for, inclusion of, and level of respect for individual and group needs, abilities, and potential" (Rankin, 2005, p. 17). We conceptualized campus climate using Hurtado and colleague's (2012) multicontextual model for diverse learning environments (MMDLE), which examines the dynamic interaction across an "educational environment enveloped in a climate that reflects the [End Page 485] institutional- and also individual-level lived experiences" (p. 58). The model centers institutional context, detailing how climate is embedded in student and faculty/staff identities, course content and cocurricular programming, and methods of teaching and professional practice. Given our central focus on academic disciplines, we focus on the curricular context within Hurtado and colleagues' (2012) model. METHOD Data Source and Sample Data for this study originate from The National LGBTQ Alumnx Survey (Garvey, 2016), which asked LGBTQ respondents questions about their undergraduate experiences. Data collection involved methods to promote participation, including snowball sampling through LGBTQ communities, colleges and universities, and social media (Garvey, 2016; Johnson et al., 2016). We used 1,556 cases from the national dataset for this study and only included respondents who graduated between 2004 and 2013. In doing so, we created a cohort of LGBTQ people who were enrolled as undergraduate students in similar sociopolitical contexts in US higher education. Regarding gender identity, 52% (n = 805) of respondents identified as cisgender men, 31% (n = 488) as cisgender women, and 9% (n = 134) with another gender identity (e.g., gender fluid, nonbinary, trans). Regarding respondents' sexual identities, 63% (n = 984) identified as bisexual, gay, or lesbian; 25% (n = 392) identified as fluid, pansexual, or queer; and 3% (n = 52) identified with another sexual identity (e.g., asexual, heterosexual, questioning). We grouped respondents into eight primary undergraduate majors from the National Center for Education Statistics Classification of Instructional Programs: arts and humanities (AH; 34%, n = 535), social and behavioral sciences (SBS; 33%, n = 516), professional programs (PP; i.e., nursing and business; 11%, n = 169), life sciences (LS; 8%, n = 124), engineering (ENG; 5%, n = 81), physical sciences (PS; 5%, n = 74), and education (ED; 4%, n = 57). Variables Our primary variable measured respondents' perceptions of how welcoming their institutions were for LGBTQ people at the time of their undergraduate enrollment, which was operationalized using a five-item Campus Climate for LGBTQ Student Scale. Prior research has shown this scale to have strong internal reliability (alpha = 0.86; Garvey, 2016). Academic major was measured using a single item that asked participants to select the category that best matched their primary undergraduate major. As there was no reason to set one particular major as a referent group, we employed effects coding to use average responses as a...