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1. An Exploration of Black Engineering Students' Aspirational Capital within Community Cultural Wealth and Ecological Systems Theory

   Manning, Jessica; Brawner, Catherine E; Mobley, Catherine; Orr, Marisa K; Brent, Rebecca (June 2023, Conference Proceedings of the 2023 ASEE Annual Conference)

   High aspirations for the future function as powerful motivators for Black students to pursue and persist in undergraduate engineering programs. Students gain mental strength by maintaining high hopes and beliefs for the future. These aspirations can be intrinsic, originating as internal motivators, or extrinsic, coming from various social circles, such as family and friends. Researchers can benefit from investigating the aspirations of Black students to develop more effective ways for faculty and administrators to support students’ dreams and goals. Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) offers an asset-based framework that describes the strengths and knowledge of Communities of Color in terms of familial, linguistic, aspirational, resistant, navigational, and social capital that Students of Color bring to both the classroom and life. Pairing CCW with Ecological Systems Theory (EST) helps expand the understanding of the proximal and distal access students have to their various forms of capital. The different levels of EST – the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem – provide a framework for analyzing how students access the CCW capitals. We have combined these two frameworks to create C2WEST, an asset-based contextual theory that offers multiple lenses for viewing how and where in the EST framework individuals access their various types of capital. Using the C2WEST framework, we highlight the different types of aspirational capital of Black students that originate in their microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem. Aspirational capital is the ability for students to maintain high expectations despite obstacles. We used two case study illustrative examples obtained through interviews with Black students in undergraduate engineering to examine the development and enactment of aspirational capital in the different layers of C2WEST. Researchers thematically coded the interviews to familiarize themselves with the data and then chose quotes from the students that exemplified aspirational capital in the various levels. The C2WEST framework will allow researchers to examine the aspirational capital of Black engineering students and gain a better understanding of the goals of Black engineering students.This framework could allow administrators and engineering educators develop better methods of supporting the academic and personal goals of Black students. By understanding the aspirational capital of students at the different levels, engineering educators will be able to provide students with individually tailored support. Through C2WEST, Black students could also further realize and conceptualize the access they have to their own aspirations regarding future career and life goals. 

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2. Highlighting Community Cultural Wealth of Black Students Raised in the United States by Parents Born and Raised Abroad

   Sayster, Aimee; Manning, Jessica Allison; Brawner, Catherine E.; Mobley, Catherine; Orr, Marisa K.; Brent, Rebecca (June 2023, ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   The number of students with multicultural experiences are growing in the United States. We define multicultural experiences as the multiple cultures that students experience in their early life and through family, which differs from the culture at their higher education institution. Many students immigrate to the US with their families after spending formative years in other countries, which gives them unique perspectives on multiple cultures. Multicultural engineering students have a different understanding of engineering from those without such experiences. These experiences both provide these students with certain advantages in engineering and present challenges in their educational pursuits. Examining both advantages and challenges provides an opportunity to understand these students’ strengths and adaptation strategies. Engineering is a field that requires new thoughts, insights, and opinions to advance. Their meaningful life experiences (particularly their multicultural experiences) can bring new light to issues in engineering as well. The study utilizes data from a larger mixed-methods study of Black students in engineering for in-depth interview transcripts, survey data, and an identity circle artifact. Two cases were purposefully selected for the current study – both participants were raised by African parents and had an additional international experience in a predominantly White country before studying engineering in the US. Both participants used this third point of reference to reflect on and give a rich description of their experience in the US. Through qualitative analysis of these cases, we will address the question: In what ways do Black students who are first- or second-generation immigrants from Africa and have studied abroad leverage community cultural wealth in engineering in the US? We use Yosso’s Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) framework to highlight the strengths these students leverage in engineering. CCW is an asset-based framework developed to highlight the strengths of the students from Communities of Color. There are six assets used as a guiding lens to inform research in these communities: familial, social, aspirational, navigational, resistance, and linguistic capital that students bring from their familial and community background. This framework names and categorizes the numerous skills Students of Color have obtained through lived experiences and how the students are able to be successful in academia. Furthermore, students have the ability to utilize these capitals to their advantage in order to be successful beyond academia. Exploring the CCW of Black immigrant students from African countries will give researchers a better understanding of the assets and strengths these students possess as well as the challenges they face. Through an examination of the CCW and various forms of capital for two Black immigrant students, we will emphasize the strengths of students with multicultural experiences in the hopes that they will be further valued and supported by university administrators. 

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3. Queer cultural capital of LGBTQ+ undergraduate STEM students

   https://doi.org/10.1615/JWomenMinorScienEng.2025053966  

   Bouchard, Travis; Bakka, Brandon; Borrego, Maura (January 2026, Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering)

   We apply Yosso's community cultural wealth (CCW) and Pennell's queer cultural capital frameworks to the experiences of LGBTQ+ STEM students. We conducted interviews with nine LGBTQ+ undergraduate STEM majors and coded for the seven forms of wealth defined by Yosso and Pennell to determine if these are valuable frameworks for understanding the experiences of LGBTQ+ STEM students.The study found that students displayed most forms of capital in navigating their STEM environments,and research could expand and adapt CCW to fit the unique experiences of LGBTQ+ students. Linguistic,social, and navigational forms of capital emerged as the most important, but we also found examples of aspirational, resistant and transgressive capital. In particular, we substantially expand examples of linguistic capital beyond the findings of prior research, and some of the first examples of transgressive capital in STEM students are identified as such. 

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4. Community Cultural Wealth and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Identities as Motivators for Black Boys to Participate in a High School Academy of Engineering

   https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14080873  

   Fletcher_Jr, Edward C; Carroll, Turhan K (August 2024, Education Sciences)

   Researchers have emphasized how the high school STEM-themed career academy model benefits ethnically and racially diverse learners by promoting positive STEM identities and raising the interest of students to pursue STEM college and career pathways. The purpose of this study was to examine the reasons why Black boys participated in a high school academy of engineering. We were also interested in identifying academy features that helped promote (or inhibit) positive STEM identities among Black male students. In this qualitative study, we used data from 17 Black male high school academy of engineering students. We analyzed the interview transcripts using a constant comparative method. Using an embedded case study approach, we compared our findings to the community cultural wealth (CCW) factors and the factors that researchers have found to influence students’ STEM identities. We found that the participants brought six forms of capital with them that served as sources of motivation to participate in the program. The forms of capital that were related to the CCW framework included aspirational, familial, navigational, resistance, and social. While we did not uncover linguistic capital in our data analysis, we did find an additional source of capital that was not reflected in the CCW framework. We found that the Black boys had natural STEM talent based on the formation of STEM identities. The students had high aptitudes in STEM-related subjects, and they were engaged by participating in hands-on activities. We recommend that schools integrate STEM curricula for Black boys and provide Black men to serve as STEM role models through guest speaking opportunities, job shadowing, mentoring, internships, and other work-based learning experiences. 

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5. A Qualitative Exploration of an Assets-Based Approach to Building Engineering Transfer Student Capital

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE58773.2023.10343352  

   Frady, Kristin K.; Sims, Randi (October 2023, Frontiers in education)

   Community colleges with their open-access mission, broad accessibility, and lower higher education costs play a vital role in educating and awarding advanced credentials to future engineers, scientists, and technicians. Transfer pathways to engineering are confusing, vague, and complex. Further, many transfer students, who tend to be more diverse, are viewed through a deficit-based perspective where the focus has been on barriers instead of viewing their abilities, skills, talents, and advantages through an asset-based lens. Thus, the purpose of this work-in-progress qualitative study, guided by Laanan’s theory of transfer student capital, is to investigate expert perspectives of assets, factors, and strategies enabling access for two-year college students to engineering transfer pathways. 11 experts, influencers, and programs across the United States participated in semi-structured interviews. Inductive analysis of the interviews resulted in 13 categories that formed four major themes: assets, factors, strategies, and challenges. These results build on prior transfer student research through a focus on practical strategies and tactics used to build transfer student capital for engineering transfer students. Most importantly, these results also highlight a previously missing asset-based perspective of transfer students to shift the lens to strengths-based views and conversations about transfer students. 

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