Meseret F. Hailu is an Assistant Professor of Higher and Postsecondary Education in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. Her work focuses on the retention of minoritized women in STEM pathways and professions.
Prior to coming to ASU, Meseret was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at The Ohio State University, where she studied the experiences of women of color faculty in engineering departments. During her doctoral studies, Professor Hailu received a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Fellowship award from the U.S. Department of Education, and conducted research in Ethiopia.
Guiding Research Questions:
Current Projects:
Professor Hailu’s primary research explores how women in Ethiopia navigate science and technology higher education. To this end, her doctoral research, Understanding Why Women Stay: Examining Persistence Factors of Women Majoring in Science and Technology Programs in Public Ethiopian Universities Using a Mixed Methods Design, focused on how women circumvent barriers in STEM education. This contributes to the field of higher education by showing how classic retention models for undergraduate students should be complicated when considering different national contexts. In the case of Ethiopia, it is evident that gender, ethnicity, and rurality are intersecting factors that influence the ability of students to graduate from college.
Professor Hailu’s second project, “Using Critical Race Feminism to Explore the Experiences of Black Immigrant Women in Mathematics and Engineering,” examines the politicized, racialized, and gendered dimensions of traditionally “objective” disciplines. This work relies on critical discourse analysis, case studies, and surveys to better understand how Black immigrants use their cultural epistemologies to gain terminal degrees in pure mathematics and engineering.
Professor Hailu’s third line of inquiry is an applied persistence model titled “Comparative Database of the Retention of Women in STEM Education.” In this emerging work, she uses large-scale quantitative survey methods to develop a regional database about best practices that help women graduate with STEM higher education degrees in sub-Saharan Africa.
Joseph, N.M., Hailu, M.F., & Matthews, J.S. (2019). Normalizing Black Girls’ Humanity in Mathematics Classroom. Harvard Education Review, 89/1:132-155.
Hailu, M.F. (2018). Examining the Role of Girl Effect in Contributing to Positive Education Ideologies for Girls in Ethiopia. Gender and Education, 1-15.
Joseph, N. & Hailu, M.F., & Boston, D. (2017). Black Girls’ and Women's Persistence in the P-20 Mathematics Pipeline: Two Decades of Children and Youth Education Research. Review of Research in Education, 41/1:203–227.
Spring 2021 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
HED 620 | Diversity in Higher Education |
EPA 691 | Seminar |
Fall 2020 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
HED 573 | Applied Inquiry in Higher Ed |
HED 598 | Special Topics |
Spring 2020 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
HED 573 | Applied Inquiry in Higher Ed |
HED 593 | Applied Project |
Fall 2019 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
HED 598 | Special Topics |