(Dis)Engaging with entrepreneurial training: perspectives and experiences of women STEM faculty

Over the past two decades, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education have increasingly been integrated into higher education and academic careers. Driven in large part by the need to compete on a global scale, academic entrepreneurship is emerging as a means of financial support, innovation, and aplomb for academic scientists and engineers. However, entrepreneurial spaces, including entrepreneurial training, remain dominated by men. Understanding how women faculty members experience the emerging role of entrepreneurship becomes important when addressing issues of inequity within entrepreneurial settings and higher education more broadly. To that end, this study explores the experiences and perceptions of women STEM faculty members in the United States. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 32 women, half of whom had participated in entrepreneurial training and half of whom had not. Four factors emerged as salient: the context of faculty careers, interests and skills, values, and prior experiences. Perceptions of alignments and misalignments related to those factors influenced whether women STEM faculty members were inclined or disinclined toward entrepreneurial endeavors. The findings point to recommendations for ways in which entrepreneurial training could be better designed to increase equity and inclusion but also raise critical questions about their increased presence in the higher education landscape.