Exclusive $\phi$ Meson Electroproduction with CLAS12

The Continuous Electron Accelerator Facility Large Angle Spectrometer detector (CLAS12) at Jefferson Lab in Virginia has completed a successful period of data acquisition starting in early 2018 of a longitudinally polarized 10.6 GeV electron beam on a 5 cm unpolarized liquid hydrogen target. A program to study exclusive $\phi$ meson electroproduction is now underway as this is an ideal channel for quantifying the gluonic properties of the nucleon. This analysis focuses on the exclusive reaction $e p \to epK^+K^-$. The analysis strategy consists of two steps: first to establish the approach to the small-size regime by testing model-independent features of the reaction mechanism, such as the $Q^2$-independence of the t-slopes; then in a second step, extracting the gluonic size in the valence region as a function of $x_{B}$. This talk will focus on reviewing the current state of the analysis and future plans for the exclusive $\phi$ meson channel with CLAS12.