Exploring how Black engineering students build and use their cultural capital

Despite ongoing efforts to increase the representation of Black students in engineering, participation among Black students remains low. While past research on Black students in engineering has highlighted the challenges they experience in higher educational institutions, a growing number seek to use asset-based perspectives to highlight their experiences. Also, despite minority-serving institutions (MSIs) producing significant portions of Black engineers, there remains a dearth of literature that has explored Black engineering students’ experiences at MSIs. Through the analytical perspective of community cultural wealth, we explored how five Black engineering undergraduate students built and used their cultural capital. We used a qualitative approach that included semi-structured interviews. The interviews were analyzed using an iterative inductive and deductive coding process. We developed two themes: Relationships as the Bedrock for Success and Intersections of Cultural Capital in Overcoming Challenges. Relationships were essential for building, maintaining, and supporting the cultural capital of participants. These students employed combinations, layers, and multidirectional aspects of their cultural capital to persist and succeed in engineering. Our study emphasizes the need for research that acknowledges differences in Black students’ experiences at HSIs and HBCUs, and the importance of diversifying faculty and their approaches to student engagement.