Comin’ from where I’m from: Connecting place and Blackness in students’ STEM major experiences

• In Event: Placing Blackness: An exploration of Black STEM students’ connections to place identity

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine and document the places that are brought up during conversations with Black STEM students enrolled in institutions across Georgia. We pose the question “which geographical locations surface as important indicators for these students’ identities and worldview?”.

Theoretical framework: Our paper continues this focus on place, stemming from the idea that because Blackness is not monolithic, a variety of factors influence how one comes to understand themselves racialized as Black. One of these factors undeniably ties to place (McPherson & Shelby, 2004). A geographical and regional context for Blackness suggests that a place like Atlanta, Geogia, is important given the diversity of Black residents, and the civic and political history of its community members and leaders (Author, 2021; Siddle-Walker, 2018). Theoretically, this means that there are a host of different Black identities one might take on under the umbrella of Blackness, largely because of the sheer number of Black folks that reside in the city. Thus, Black students are exposed to varying examples of how to be real Black (Dumas & ross, 2016), and we argue that place informs how they understand this part of their Black identity and its presence within the STEM environment. Black spaces then are those that connect Black people to these ideas of home and cultural identities, generationally and geographically, shaping what it means to be Black without compromise or apology (Warren & Coles, 2020)

Methods and data sources: Data collection for this paper began in the spring of 2024. Focus group sessions were structured around students recruited at several institutions across the state of Georgia. Our analysis consisted of thematic coding around participant discussions of geographical locations (Saldaña, 2016). We coded these moments as those that reflected a personal or projected attachment to a city, state, or region, and what connections these offerings had to their Blackness and person onto-epistemologies.

Results: Preliminary results are showing connections to these various places (e.g., Atlanta, the “country”) become signifiers of identity in that participants view being Black and from a particular place offers explanatory context for their STEM participation. These places become communities that participants are either indebted to (for making them who they are) or feel great pride and motivation about returning to and upholding a legacy to make others from that space proud. Data shows how Black students draw a variety of conclusions about how the places where they lived or how they see other Black students who have lived elsewhere, have been prepared to deal with and navigate these environments.

Scholarly significance: The significance of this work can be seen in the ways that we continue to tease out what it means to be Black. Familiarity with how these students take up meanings of Blackness in relation to a place identity can have implications for where institutional leaders and policymakers choose to pool resources, and how educators might assist in the construction of stronger STEM pipelines, retention, and place-based community work.

Authors

• Nickolaus A. Ortiz, Georgia State University

• Paris Iyamu, Georgia State University