It was a Whole New Environment: A New Framework for Access of Underrepresented STEM Students

• In Event: 553 - Section on Race, Class and Gender Paper Session. Creating Change: Race, Gender, Class and the Politics of the Arts and Performance

Abstract

Research in education suggests that racial and ethnic minority students complete advanced degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) at lower rates than their white counterparts. We examine how multicontextual academic environments offer non-traditional ways of assessing the promise of underrepresented minority students and offer benefits to these students once they start work in a lab. The mixed-method data for this chapter include in-depth interviews with 58 students, faculty and program administrators as well as 211 student survey responses from various STEM contexts across four states and five institutions in the Southwest. We discuss how multicontextual academic environments attract students to STEM fields and help them thrive as they advance toward their graduate education focusing specifically on interaction, space, association, learning, and systems. The diminished impact of affirmative action and race based admissions to programs in current and future political climates necessitates a new framework for minority student access and assessment. Multicontextual models for increasing minority student success in STEM offer a cutting edge and accessible diversity model that challenge typical assimilationist models for student development and benefit all individuals, regardless of race, class and gender.

Author

• Rebecca Beals, University of New Mexico