Success Stories: How Social Identities Affect
Students’ Educational Trajectories in STEM
AACU Annual Meeting
October 22, 2010
Houston, Texas
Felisha Herrera
Josephine Gasiewski
Minh Tran
Sylvia Hurtado, Principal Investigator
Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA
Ricardo Jacquez, NMSU Dean of Engineering
A fundamental reason students who
succeed in the sciences choose not to
continue is because they experience
conflict between their emerging
science identity and “the enduring
sense of who they are and who they
want to become”.
(Cobb, 2004)
Background
• Persistence in STEM Fields
– Underrepresented racial minority (URM)
students earn 17% of STEM bachelor
degrees, but only 6-10% of STEM graduate
enrollments are URMs
– Women earn slightly more bachelor’s degrees
in STEM than men, but earn only 21% of
doctoral degrees in engineering and computer
science and 30-40% of doctorates in other
science fields.
(NSF, 2009)
Overall Study
• December 2009 to April 2010
• 60 hours of semi-structured focus group
interviews
• 7 universities across US
• 3 PWI, 3 HSI,1 HBCU
• 150 masters /doctoral students
• 35% African Americans
• 21% White
• 25% Latino/a
• 9% Asian Americans
• 5% American Indian
• 5% who marked other
•50% women
•average age 27.5
(range of 21-53 years old)
Sub-Study
• New Mexico State University &
University of New Mexico
• Bridge to the Doctorate Program
• 31 STEM Graduate Students Participants
– 17 Males; 14 Females
– 87% Underrepresented Racial Minorities
• 65% Latino/a
• 12% American Indian
• 12% White
• 10% African American
Conceptual Framework
Science Identity (Carlone & Johnson, 2007)
• Recognition of being a legitimate “science
person”
Social Identity (Jones & McEwen 2000; Lin & Tate, 2005, Nasir
& Saxe, 2003)
• Multiple Identity Frameworks within Multiple
Contexts
Anti-Deficit Framework (Harper, 2007)
• Emphasis on student experiences, support
systems, and educational interventions
Validation Theory (Rendon, 1994; 2002)
• Enabling, confirming and supportive process
Science Identity Development Model
Adapted from: Jones & McEwen (2000)
Societal
Family/Community
Multiple Contexts
Science
Race/
Ethnicity
Religion/
Spirituality
Mental/Physical
Ability
Nationality/
Immigration Status
Science
Identity
Socioeconomic
Status
Gender
Culture
Sexual
Orientation
Science Context
• Interactions with
faculty/peers in
science
•Institution/
disciplinary culture
•Lab/classroom
environments
Key Themes on Identity
• Science identity
development
• Interactions between
multiple identities
and science
• Negotiating conflict
between multiple
identities and science
• Support systems and
educational
interventions
Science Identity Development
I think science is definitely a big part of my life and
it’s a big part of who I am, just because it’s more of
a way of thinking. I think you see things in a
different way than maybe other people do, and you
analyze things and you want to know why things
work the way they do and how they work.
(Latina Female)
Science Identity Development
I am the first one in my family to complete a
degree…my family, they were like “Oh, look at the
new engineer.” Well, I don’t feel like engineer. I
think I will feel like one once I work with a big
company and I participate with the big projects and
I’ll feel like I contributed to those kind of projects. So
I think afterwards I will feel like an engineer.
(Latino Male)
Interactions between Multiple
Identities and Science
I think I became interested in science just as
a way to understand my surroundings. I
grew up on an Indian reservation so I saw a
lot of death and a lot of disease and things
like that going on when I was growing up.
My interest was, like I said, was to
understand my environment and try to get a
feel for the underlying causes of the things I
was seeing.
(American Indian Male)
Interactions between Multiple
Identities and Science
Q: What’s it like being female engineers?
A: It always surprises people when you tell them.
It was funny, when I came down here for the tour, I
came with my boyfriend at the time. We went
through the department, and the department head
addressed him. [My boyfriend] was like, “Not me.
I’m goin’ to journalism.” So there’s still
stereotypes, but most people are like “Wow cool.”
(Latina Female)
Negotiating Identity Conflicts
He asked me “How does you being in science…, does
that conflict with your religious beliefs?” I can see the
perceptions that you hear all the time, and I do feel it
‘cause I am a religious person first, then everything else.
So I do think they interact all the time, but I think being
in science and even as a student with a culture and
identity, I think they just blend. I think sometimes
putting on your hat at this certain place is okay. Okay,
now I have to [put on another hat because] now I’m with
this group. I’m a Christian first. So wherever I’m at
that’s gonna be my focus first and then I blend in if I’m
science.
(Latino Male)
Negotiating Identity Conflicts
I think it wasn’t until high school that I took a biology
course, and I really loved biology; it was my favorite course.
But at that point I still didn’t have the confidence to think I
could do science. I was never good at math, so it never
would have occurred to me to do anything related to science
or technology. I think if you’re not good in those subjects
you kind of do get shifted to another path. So it took me
having to wait until I was older and just saying, “I like it,
and I’m going to do it”. One of my goals now is to work
with minority students to try to lift them up at a teaching
capacity so they don’t have to feel like I did, like, “Wow, I
don’t belong here.”
(Latina Female)
Support Systems and Educational
Interventions
I talk about my experiments with my parents and
my little brothers. I talk about our immune system,
how it’s activated and what happens when
something goes wrong. They’re just amazed by it
‘cause I’m Navajo so we have stories of how we
became us, but then there’s a science part to that
too. They like to hear what I learned and its
relevance. Maybe because there’s stuff that they
didn’t know could go on in your body, so it’s really
fun for you to talk with your family about
[science]. They’re really supportive.
(American Indian Female)
Support Systems and Educational
Interventions
It’s nice to see people that are from different
ethnicities, different backgrounds, doing things
that they’re doing right now. It actually kind of
encourages you. Like they’re doing this so I’m
definitely able to do this.
(American Indian Female)
Support Systems and Educational
Interventions
There are some programs that actually help support
students. So, for example, there’s a program here that
recruits students from community colleges from the
four corners and they bring them down here and give
them some experience in science. They allow them to
work in a lab and actually get a feel for it. That’s what
really drives a lot of students to come to this university.
They have their mentor. They have a way of
supporting themselves financially [through] programs
that help students work in the lab and pay them to
work. So that really helps people I think.
(American Indian Female)
New Mexico AMP
Bridge to the Doctorate Program
Provides access to:
•academic support
•financial support
•professional development
•faculty mentorship and
guided-research
Seeks to produce highly qualified Ph.D. candidates and to
track students’ academic progress and professional
development through the Ph.D.
Discussion
• Institutional change vs. individual
integration
• Awareness of potential “mismatch”
science culture and environments (i.e.
values, practices, etc.) and students’
identities
• Validation of social identity
acknowledges student’s contributions
• The importance of identity
considerations across both academic
and student support
Moving from Research to
Practice
Group Discussion
• How do these issues affect your individual
campuses?
• Given the research findings, each group
will develop a list of recommendations for
their respective institutions.
Contact Information
Faculty and Co-PIs:
Sylvia Hurtado
Mitchell Chang
Postdoctoral Scholars:
Kevin Eagan
Josephine Gasiewski
Graduate Research Assistants:
Christopher Newman
Monica Lin
Minh Tran
Gina Garcia
Jessica Sharkness
Felisha Herrera
Administrative Staff:
Aaron Pearl
Cindy Mosqueda
Juan Garibay
Tanya Figueroa
Papers and reports are available for download at:
http://heri.ucla.edu/nih
Project e-mail: herinih@ucla.edu
Acknowledgments: This study was made possible by the support of the National Institute
of General Medical Sciences, NIH Grant Numbers 1 R01 GMO71968-01 and R01
GMO71968-05 as well as the National Science Foundation, NSF Grant Number
0757076. This independent research and the views expressed here do not indicate
endorsement by the sponsors.