UC San Diego

Community cultural wealth (CCW) is a classic framework that has been extensively used to determine what knowledge and skills minoritized students have that help them with their educational goals. The CCW framework is composed of six capitals: aspirational, familial, linguistic, navigational, resistance, and social. There is plenty of research examining community cultural wealth in racially minoritized student groups studying STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) in higher education institutions, but this research does not include Asian American students. Research focused on Asian American students in general is lacking; thus, we must develop our knowledge in the field to function as a foundation for further research. We interviewed self-identified Asian American students across three institutions to determine how community cultural wealth presents itself in Asian American students in STEM. We found that for aspirational capital, students maintained their academic and career goals via pressures from peers, family, and/or stereotypes. As for familial capital, students discussed emotional support as the primary way that their families support them. With linguistic capital, many students expressed themselves artistically, primarily through dance or music. We also found that students would take advantage of existing campus resources and faculty office hours, unlike what stereotypes may suggest. In looking through students’ social capitals, they often joined or created groups with those of similar experiences and/or goals; these can take the forms of cultural, discipline-based, or career-based organizations. Finally, with resistant capital students would try to (re)connect to their culture. We also delved further into resistant capital using the AsianCrit framework, we identified three themes in which Asian American undergraduate students in STEM responded to experiences with racism: they downplayed or ignored their experiences with racism; they acknowledged the intersections between their Asian American identities and other identities; and they created or participated in programs that would assist those from underserved or underrepresented communities, motivated by their experiences with racism.