Racialized Sustainability: How Race and Power Shape the Institutionalization of STEM Intervention Programs

• In Event: Balancing Acts and Breaking Walls: Centering Equity Amid Organizational Change and Complexity

Abstract

Despite evidence that STEM intervention programs (SIPs) improve outcomes for racially minoritized students, few studies examine how these initiatives are sustained or institutionalized. This multiple case study explores how two SIPs, the Chancellor’s Science Scholars at UNC-Chapel Hill and the Millennium Scholars Program at Penn State, navigated sustainability nearly a decade after their founding. Drawing on Ray’s (2019) theory of racialized organizations, this study identifies four organizational strategies that enabled SIP survival and growth, while revealing how race and power shaped their legitimacy. Findings demonstrate that sustainability is not a neutral process but one mediated by racialized logics, resource politics, and proximity to institutional prestige. This research reframes sustainability as a racialized organizational process with implications for long-term change.

Author

• Edwin J. Perez, University of Texas - El Paso