MOTIVES AND TACTICS: REPRESENTATIONS OF ASPIRATIONAL CAPITAL AMONG MARGINALIZED-IDENTITY STEM STUDENTS

While engaging supports offered through a scholarship program, marginalized-identity STEM students draw on community cultural wealth to persist in an environment that is not designed for their success. This analysis focuses on the presence of aspirational capital: hope and goals that prevail despite systemic barriers for marginalized-identity individuals and communities. Semi-structured interview data from 31 students, through the engagement of basic qualitative methodology, reveal students’ ongoing search and adaptation for institutional opportunities, engagement of individual-istic tactics including keen self-awareness and narratives of “hard work” to meet established goals, relationships to trusted guides, and community-serving orientations as representations of their aspirational capital.