Community Cultural Wealth: An Assets‐Based Approach to Persistence of Engineering Students of Color

Abstract Background Community cultural wealth, or the types of cultural capital that students of color employ, has been used to understand the persistence of students of color in engineering. The assets‐based theory of community cultural wealth helps identify the cultural resources that these students develop in their families and communities and bring to engineering. This theory problematizes the experiences of students of color in the context of an educational system designed for White males. Purpose The study sought to answer four research questions: What types of community cultural wealth did African American and Latino students rely on through their engineering programs? How did the different types of capital contribute to student persistence? What differences emerged between African American and Latino students? What differences emerged at the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender? Design/Method We applied secondary qualitative analysis to interviews with 31 engineering undergraduates: 11 African American students and 20 Latino students from 11 universities. Results Each type of community cultural wealth took various forms and contributed to student persistence. Students alluded to navigational and aspirational capital most often. African American men and women activated particular types of capital differently. Women with different racial/ethnic backgrounds also relied on different forms of capital or methods of activation. Conclusions The types of capital are dynamic in how they interact with one another. Community cultural wealth is a useful assets‐based construct for the study of persistence of engineering students of color.