CCWT Publications

Bañuelos, N.,  Jang-Tucci, K., Benbow, R., McCray, T., Gonzalez-Quizhpe, L. (2023). Forming Science Identity in Personal Networks: A Quantitative Study of Social Support for Latine STEM Students. Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions. University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Abstract: Although Latine students and their families maintain high aspirations for their achievement in STEM (Science,Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), they continue to face barriers to STEM degree completion and remain underrepresented in the STEM workforce. Social support systems are key to science identity formation and sense of belonging, two important predictors of persistence and attainment in STEM, particularly among historically marginalized students (Chemers et al., 2011; Strayhorn, 2012). For this reason, documenting Latine college students’ social networks – including their strengths, structure, and how they change over time– can help researchers understand trajectories in STEM.

Using the Community Cultural Wealth framework (CCW) – a theory focused on strengths within Communities of Color (Yosso, 2005) – this study examines survey responses from Latine STEM majors across the University of Texas System and measures important contours of Latine STEM students’ social networks, including (1) the features of these social networks, (2) the forms of CCW students possess in their social networks, and (3) the relationships that exist between students’ networks, science identity, and sense of belonging.

Turenne-Akram, T., Wolfgram, M., Collet-Klingenberg, L., & Yu, H. (2022). What can we learn from research about internships for students with disabilities? Preliminary results from the survey of the College Internship Study. Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions (Research Brief #19). University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Abstract: Internships in higher education provide academic and career development opportunities during college and post-graduation. There have been many studies that focus on the benefits of participating in an internship. However, there are significant barriers to accessing internships that can arise as a result of the students’ socio-economic status, their limited time, family obligations, academic commitments (Hora, et al., 2019), as well as raced, classed, gendered and other intersectional identity-factors (Wolfgram et al., 2021). This brief uses the findings of the College Internship Study to understand internship participation for students with disabilities and discusses the lack of research on how disability-stigma impacts students’ access to internships.

Schalewski, L. (2021). The Role of Socioeconomic Status and Internships on Early Career Earnings: Evidence for Widening and Rerouting Pathways to Social Mobility. Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions (Research Brief #18). University of Wisconsin–Madison, Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

Abstract: The research brief first summarizes findings on internships, a university structure, pulled from a study that more broadly examined how student engagement and high-impact practices relate to post-graduation outcomes among students from different SES backgrounds (Schalewski, 2020). First, results suggest internships have a mediating role between a student’s (SES) and early career earnings. Next, results show students from middle-SES backgrounds or those within quartiles two and three experience a significant effect from internship participation on early career earnings with non-significant findings for the lowest and highest quartiles. The brief concludes with implications for practice that aim to widen and reroute pathways to internships for lower- SES students to increase opportunities that lead to higher early career salaries and set trajectories for social mobility.

Bañuelos, N. (2021). Community Cultural Wealth Goes to College: A Review of the Literature for Career Services Professionals and Researchers. Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions (Research Brief #17). University of Wisconsin–Madison, Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

Abstract: Created by LatCrit scholars in the mid-2000s, Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) is an anti-deficit framework for understanding educational inequality. Since its publication, Yosso’s (2005) seminal paper on the topic has been cited thousands of times by scholars in fields as distinct as engineering, K12 education, and public health. This report reviews the recent scholarship on college students’ experiences and outcomes that uses CCW as a guiding framework. Although the intended audience for this review is career services professionals in colleges and universities, my hope is it can also be helpful for scholars of career development who want to brush up on the CCW literature and consider future research questions the framework presents. The existing literature offers insights on the college-to-career transition: it reveals the centrality of familial capital in shaping students’ career pathways, the function of resistant capital in forming students’ career interests, the utility of students’ existing social capital in the job search process, and the role of counterspaces in activating CCW for career success. However, CCW scholarship typically focuses on college students’ matriculation, persistence, sources of support, and well-being, not on their career development—including the psychological, spiritual, sociocultural, political and economic factors influencing students’ career interests and the knowledge, relationships, and environmental contexts shaping their career choices (Duffy & Dik, 2009). This gap presents opportunities for researchers and career services professionals to partner in creating and evaluating programming with CCW in mind. There are also opportunities to increase the methodological diversity of CCW scholarship, to consider the ways in which students mix CCW with “dominant” forms of capital for career success, to collect data from employers, faculty, and other gatekeepers, and to account for the role of institutional context.