Navigating, Negotiating, and Nurturing: Exploring How Students’ Cultural Tool Kits Serve as Resources for College Persistence

• In Event: Hispanic Cultural Issues: Language, Immigration, and Hispanic-Serving Institutions

Abstract

This qualitative study explores the ways in which first-generation college Chicanas draw upon their cultural wealth—specifically, family attachment and cultural knowledge nurtured by their familia (kin)—to help negotiate their first year in college. I use a multi-method approach to qualitative inquiry to help better assess how cultural wealth influences seven Chicanas' college experiences: open-ended and photo-elicitation interviews, dorm room inventories of personal-meaning artifacts, self-led campus tours, and focus groups. Ultimately, this study hopes to inspire postsecondary institutions to celebrate and honor students’ multicultural college identities through their policies and programming agendas to encourage maturation.

Author

• Janet Rocha, University of California - Los Angeles