Why We Emphasize Hispanic STEM Students
Our vision is to close academic equity gaps for all marginalized students. To kick off a tangible solution toward this vision, we are placing initial focus on the Latina/o STEM gap. Our goal is to fully develop a model that closes this specific gap, expand it across all HSIs (Hispanic Serving Institutions) and then apply the model to other marginalized student groups.
The Circle of Champions Network is being implemented with an emphasis on the Latina/o equity STEM gap. The initial goal is to close this gap for California community colleges before extending the Network to the 500+ HSIs (Hispanic Serving Institutions) in the U.S.
First-generation students come from communities with friends and family who love them, but often lack college experience and know-how. As a result, these students receive less guidance in their academic journeys. This is particularly true for many Latina/o STEM students.
The under-funded condition of the public colleges Hispanic students most often attend means there are not enough college personnel to advise every student. An estimated 45% of college students (and more for marginalized students) never see an academic advisor during their college years.
Latina/o students have a 6-year graduation rate of approximately 56%. When they start their journey at a community college, the bachelor’s degree completion rate drops to 13.8%. These rates are lower than upper-middle and upper income White, and Asian students who have rates around 70%.
The Latina/o academic equity gap has been historically persistent, and is getting worse according to Excelencia in Education. This is clearly documented with nearly 30 years of statewide course success data from California community colleges.
With a model in place that closes the gap for Hispanic STEM students, similar models can be implemented for other discipline areas and other marginalized student groups who also experience chronic academic equity gaps.
A Brief Literature Review on the Hispanic STEM Gap
Not everyone has equal access to the benefits STEM careers offer. Latina/o (particularly Latinas) remain underrepresented in STEM fields (Fry et al., 2021; Gonzalez et al., 2020). Some researchers have argued that to encourage more students of color to major in STEM we need to assist them in developing an interest from an early age (Maltese & Tai, 2011). However, it is not accurate to depict Latina/o students as lacking interest or initiative to pursue STEM. The National Science Board (2014) reports that, in 2012, the proportion of Latina/o freshmen intending to major in STEM (42%) was higher than the proportion of White (37%), Black (36%), or American Indian or Alaska Native (33%) students. Latinas/os are just as likely to major in STEM as their White peers but are less likely to graduate in these fields (Chen & Weko, 2009). Thus, instead of locating the problem within Latina/o/s students and communities, we might ask what colleges are doing to discourage existing STEM interest among Latina/o students, and/or what colleges are doing (or not doing) to tap into the already existing wealth of resources within Latina/o families and communities.
Although Latina/o students and their families maintain high aspirations for STEM achievement (Hernandez et al., 2016; Langenkamp, 2019; National Science Board, 2014), they continue to face gaps in STEM degree completion and workforce representation. Latina/o make up 17% of employed adults, but only 8% of all STEM workers, 12% of STEM bachelor's degree recipients, and 6% of STEM research doctorates (Fry et al., 2021). Because the number of Latina/o undergraduates is growing faster than any other racial or ethnic group (NCES, 2019), their lower rates of STEM bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree attainment have profound impacts on the United States economy, as well as for addressing racial inequities (Santiago et al., 2015).
Understanding how Latina/o STEM students draw from their existing assets and build social networks for educational and career success can advance racial equity in STEM. Social support systems are key to science identity formation and a sense of belonging, two important predictors of persistence and attainment in STEM, particularly among marginalized students (Chemers et al., 2011; Strayhorn, 2012). Historically, however, educators depicted Latina/o students as lacking social support (Tichavakunda, 2019) or being unable to develop strong identities as scientists (Carlone & Johnson, 2007). This focus on what they lack, or a deficit approach, has caused scholars, faculty, practitioners, and administrators to ignore the enormous resources students of color possess in their families, communities, and within themselves (Colina Neri et al., 2021). Latina/o social networks are instrumental in helping them get into college (Rios-Aguilar & Deil-Amen, 2012), and students of color are adept at combining their cultural capital with skills and resources valued by dominant groups (Kolluri, 2020). Instead of ignoring these assets, colleges need to recognize them in order to help STEM students cultivate them, deploy them, convert them, and share them in their families and communities of origin (Mejia et al., 2018).
To explore the impact social networks have on students’ lives, we have been using Cultural Wealth (CCW) and Funds of Knowledge (FK) models to guide our work. CCW and FK are frameworks describing students' assets that have recently gained traction among STEM education researchers (Rincon & Rodriguez, 2021; Colina Neri, Zipin, Rios-Aguilar & Huerta, 2023). Because asset-based perspectives are relatively new in STEM (Harper, 2010), most CCW and FK research in this area has been written by education scholars (not scientists) relying on qualitative methods alone, focusing on students' experiences in (not after) college, and using single measures of CCW or social support (Denton et al., 2020, p. 572). These approaches limit our understanding of the linkages between Latina/o students’ different assets, as well as how these students use their resources in the transition after college (Estrada et al., 2018; Rios-Aguilar et al., 2011).
A deep implementation of the Circle of Champions at Gavilan College will give us the opportunity to conduct quantitative assessments of CCW/FW theory and initial findings from earlier qualitative research. The Circle of Champions is ideal for examining strategies that incorporate the conversion of Latina/o students’ assets into academic capital. Because of their commitment to Latina/o students, they may also impact students' growth and strategic use of cultural capital in ways that can inform best practices at institutions without the same level of experience with asset-based approaches.