Targeting four institutions with structured science research programs for undergraduates, this study focuses on how underrepresented students experience science. Several key themes emerged from focus group discussions: learning to become research scientists, experiences with the culture of science, and views on racial and social stigma. Participants spoke of essential factors for becoming a scientist, but their experiences also raised complex issues about the role of race and social stigma in scientific training. Students experienced the collaborative and empowering culture of science, exhibited strong science identities and high self-efficacy, while developing directed career goals as a result of “doing science” in these programs.

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This qualitative study relies on Freire’s conception of liberatory praxis to examine White male college students’ becoming aware of racism and translating awareness into action. The participants developed racial cognizance via crossracial contact and course content. They also tended to be open to interrogating racism and racial privilege due to other marginalized identities (e.g., being gay). The participants took actions against racism but continued to struggle with race (e.g., essentializing minority experiences). The findings demonstrate the importance of race-conscious curricula, empathy, and cross-racial contact in promoting racial justice actions, while illustrating the nonlinear trajectory of White student racial identity development.

In this retrospective study, the academic resilience of two individuals of Mexican heritage who graduated from Stanford University is described. The respondents (a woman and a man) now in their early 20s came from home backgrounds of extreme impoverishment and adversity. By means of in-depth interviews the challenges the two respondents faced in school beginning in kindergarten and continuing through their graduation from Stanford is described. Both respondents attribute their academic success to the support given them by their mothers and their personal motivation to succeed in school; however, the authors show that this was also possible because the respondents acquired knowledge of the “culture of college” that is essential for the transition from high school to college. The authors describe the processes of this information transmission and how even though it changed the life of their respondents, it has not altered the life of their family.