2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This Critical Theory Paper aims to consider how engineering educators might use new survey research tools to highlight the strengths Latine STEM students bring to their education from their families, communities, languages, cultures, and experiences. We present the Academic and Career Cultural Wealth Scale (ACCW), which is based on Yosso’s (2005) Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) framework – a popular concept in the Critical Race Theory tradition that has been used on occasion in STEM education research (e.g. Batres Spezza et al., 2023; Dika et al., 2018). Drawing from surveys of Latine STEM majors (N=443) attending a large, public university system in the Southwestern U.S., we offer preliminary findings related to two research questions:
RQ1: What forms of Community Cultural Wealth do Latine STEM majors possess as measured by the ACCW?
RQ2: What is the relationship between students’ Community Cultural Wealth and their STEM identity?
Here, we are particularly concerned with STEM identity - or viewing oneself as a mathematician, scientist, or engineer - as this construct is a significant predictor of STEM attainment and commitment for historically marginalized students (Chemers et al., 2011). Typically, scholars focus on determinants of STEM identity outside of students’ home cultures, ignoring the critical role of early STEM experiences in non-formal settings, as well as family- and community-driven reasons for pursuing STEM degrees (Rincón et al., 2020). The qualitative literature on CCW suggests that, although these assets are regularly ignored by schools, they have a role in helping students see themselves as STEM professionals (Mobley & Brawner, 2019).
Preliminary results offer evidence in support of measuring the CCW framework’s underlying concepts quantitatively, even as these concepts remain highly correlated and theoretically interrelated. Our findings also point to sub-forms of CCW (e.g. Spiritual Capital, Fictive Familial Capital) warranting further investigation. As STEM identity is highly correlated with all forms of CCW, our findings also have implications for asset-based program development to support Latine students’ persistence and attainment in STEM.