“Life prepared me well for succeeding”: The Enactment of Community Cultural Wealth, Experiential Capital, and Transfer Student Capital by First-Generation Engineering Transfer Students

Abstract

Community colleges have long been recognized as pivotal institutions for broadening educational opportunity for a variety of marginalized populations, including first-generation students. These institutions are also an important starting point for students desiring to eventually earn a bachelor’s degree in a science, technology, engineering, or mathematics discipline. Our qualitative study explores the experiences of 15 first-generation community college transfer students majoring in engineering. We use the theory of community cultural wealth and the concepts of experiential capital and transfer student capital as lenses for analyzing and interpreting our semistructured interview data and for formulating recommendations to improve the transfer experiences and educational outcomes of this population. This sample of students enacted several types of community cultural wealth and experiential capital when navigating the engineering transfer pathway and in their engineering studies. They were less likely to enact the elements of transfer student capital, however. Instead, our results indicate that the participants attribute their successful transitions to their self-motivation and initiative associated with community cultural wealth and experiential capital, rather than institutional interventions associated with transfer student capital. We conclude with recommendations for strengthening institutional programs directed at first-generation engineering transfer students.