"Your Family is Always With You": Perceptions of Parental Relationships Among Hispanic/Latinx Young Adults Pursuing STEM Careers.

Hispanic/Latinx young adults remain significantly underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, yet the role families play in these young adults' trajectories in STEM is still underexamined. The purpose of this study was to examine the relational supports and constraints that Hispanic/Latinx college students in STEM majors experienced with their parents as they moved through college and transitioned into their first year of graduate school or full-time employment. Two rounds of interviews were conducted with 18 Hispanic/Latinx young adults who were part of an undergraduate STEM program at a Hispanic-majority university. Most of the study participants reported benefiting from immense emotional support from their parents; however, this emotional support was often simultaneously coupled with home-school value conflicts and a dynamic we call "conversational constraints." Results from this study point to important interventions involving family that might improve the rates of participation of Hispanic/Latinx students from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds in STEM fields.

The Emerging STEM Paths and Science Identities of Hispanic/Latinx College Students: Examining the Impact of Multiple Undergraduate Research Experiences.

This study reports findings from 19 interviews with Hispanic/Latinx students participating in a university-wide, multiyear program designed to retain students from underrepresented backgrounds in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) at a Hispanic-serving institution. We focus on the impact that having multiple opportunities to engage in faculty-mentored, cocurricular undergraduate research experiences (UREs) had on students' STEM paths in college and the cultivation of their science identities. In addition to professional and psychosocial benefits, our findings suggest that having the opportunity to spend multiple summers in UREs at partnering institutions away from home helped to strengthen Hispanic/Latinx students' comfort levels with being away from their families and helped them recognize the broad range of opportunities available to them for graduate school.

Navigating Social Relationships with Mentors and Peers: Comfort and Belonging among Men and Women in STEM Summer Research Programs.

Gender disparities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are well documented, yet little is known about how women and men students establish social relationships with research mentors and peers and how that shapes their experiences in STEM. We conducted a series of interviews with 17 undergraduate students from a Hispanic majority institution regarding their participation in STEM-focused summer research programs at nine universities. Differences in levels of comfort in relationships were present when comparing men and women. Women students expressed comfort in relationships with mentors who provided psychosocial mentoring, were available to answer questions, and were of the same gender; they expressed some social discomfort in informal interactions with mentors. Men students felt comfortable with mentors who provided limited guidance, little psychosocial mentoring, and opportunities for informal interactions. In terms of peer relationships, women sought out the confidence of a few similar peers, while men were comfortable with a wide variety of peers. Men's greater comfort with social relationships seemed to reflect their affinity with the masculine-dominated culture of STEM. For women, cultivating safe spaces through relationships with supportive peers and working with same-gender faculty mentors seemed to mitigate some of the discomforting aspects of their STEM research experiences.