Empowerment as Black & Latinx STEM Student Success: The Importance of Majors, Learning Experiences, and Minority-Serving Institutions

Juan Garibay

Despite the significant investment of national agencies in developing future STEM professionals' social and civic responsibility, there are no known studies that have longitudinally examined racial/ethnic minoritized STEM students' social justice outcomes, especially over the long-term. As a result, little is known about the specific long-term developmental experiences of racial/ethnic minoritized STEM students across multiple contexts. To address this gap, this project examines how background characteristics, different STEM majors and learning experiences, and institutions (e.g, Minority-Serving vs. Traditionally White Institutions) predict two outcomes measured seven years after college entry: social agency and values toward conducting research that will have a meaningful impact on underserved communities. Additionally, whether student outcomes are impacted by the interplay of disciplinary and institutional contexts is explored. The study utilizes multilevel modeling on national longitudinal samples of African American/Black and Latinx STEM bachelor's degree recipients, merging longitudinal student data from the 2004 Cooperative Institutional Research Program's Freshman Survey and 2011 Post-Baccalaureate Survey with institutional data from IPEDS. Results will offer new insights to our current understanding of STEM success for racial/ethnic minoritized students as well as help inform federal, state, and campus-level policy and practice to better serve historically marginalized groups in STEM.

About Juan Garibay

Juan Carlos Garibay is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Virginia?s (UVA) School of Education and Human Development and a Faculty Affiliate at the UVA Center for Race and Public Education in the South. His research takes a critical quantitative approach, utilizing critical theoretical frameworks to examine campus climate and structural inequities in postsecondary education for racial/ethnic minoritized groups. Dr. Garibay?s scholarship has examined questions of social justice and racial (in)equity in STEM, the effects of campus racial incidents on white students? racial attitudes, and the effect of in-state resident tuition policies on college student views toward undocumented immigrants? access to public education. He is currently investigating how university histories of slavery impact the experiences and outcomes of students of African descent. His publications have been featured in the Journal of Higher Education, Research in Higher Education, the Review of Higher Education, the American Educational Research Journal, and the Journal of Research in Science Teaching. Dr. Garibay is a member of the editorial boards for the Journal of Higher Education and AERA Open. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in higher education and organizational change, and B.S. in applied mathematics all from the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to graduate school, Dr. Garibay worked for a community-based environmental justice organization in his hometown of Wilmington, California. He comes from a working class Mexican immigrant family and was a first-generation college student.