Graduation Term

2016

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Department of Educational Administration and Foundations: Educational Administration

Committee Chair

Pamela Twyman Hoff

Abstract

A national push exists to increase the number of African American students who pursue STEM majors (Baber, 2014). While African American students have high aspirations to pursue STEM disciplines, an incongruence remains between their aspirations and their attainment of STEM degrees (Archer, Dewitt, Osbourne, 2015). This work seeks to critically underscore the structural issues that impede African American students in their journey as STEM majors. These impediments have been explored as factors that influence the identity of African American students. In the spirit of Critical Race Theory, the goal of this study is to give voice to first year African American STEM students who reflected on their pre-college experiences in school. Their experiences were collected and analyzed to understand, from the perspective of the students, the following: 1) structural issues in their educational journey and 2) how these structural issues impact academic identity as they complete their first semester of college. Seven students participated in this study. Each student wrote his or her STEM autobiography and participated in a one-hour interview. Students also were observed within the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation program, a National Science Foundation grant that supports underrepresented STEM students. These group meetings were observed with the purpose of understanding the culture and experiences of African American STEM students.

Access Type

Dissertation-Open Access

DOI

http://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2016.Platt.C

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