Social Capital and Underrepresented Minority Graduate Students at the University of Washington School of Marine and Environmental Affairs

Abstract

University of Washington Abstract Social Capital and Underrepresented Minority Graduate Students at the University of Washington’s School of Marine and Environmental Affairs Brian P. Tracey Chair of the Supervisory Committee: David Fluharty College of the Environment The major focus of this research study is to explore how, and to what extent, social capital affects under-represented minority (URM) students in a graduate level marine science program at the University of Washington (UW) - School of Marine and Environmental Affairs (SMEA). URM students are defined by UW as Blacks/African-Americans, Latinos/Hispanics, and American Indians, Pacific Islanders, Native Alaskans and Hawaiians for the 2013-2014 academic year. This thesis focuses on the experiences of Black/African-American, Latinos/Hispanic, and Native/Indigenous American students at the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs. In this thesis, social capital refers to the connections and support networks between peers, faculty, and administration, and the resulting benefits from these connections. The primary hypothesis studied is that the inability to make these connections inhibits URM student participation. By placing attention on these underserved groups, this thesis also investigates to a degree, the cultural competency of faculty and administrators. It has been shown that, possessing the awareness and understanding of differences within and between cultural groups is a key factor in enabling educators to be effective with students of diverse backgrounds (National Education Association, 2014). At the three graduate schools of marine science at UW’s College of the Environment: Oceanography, School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences (SAFS), and Marine and Environmental Affairs (SMEA), URM graduate enrollment is approximately 11.4% (Aisenberg, 2013). That amounts to roughly one graduate level URM marine science student for every ten non-URM students. Based on SMEA’s ability to attract more URM students than the other graduate marine science programs at UW, this research explores the experiences of gradate URM students at SMEA, and how this corresponds to social capital. It should be noted that SMEA is vastly different from SAFS and Oceanography in academic design. SMEA is an interdisciplinary program that combines the social and natural sciences. For this thesis, SMEA is still considered a STEM program. In conjunction with existing literature on URM students in STEM programs, the purpose of studying such strategies is two-fold: 1) to learn the dynamics of social capital in a marine science graduate school from perspectives at all three academic levels (e.g. students, faculty, administration) and 2) to create a set of realistic recommendations that faculty and administrators can implement to create an inclusive and supportive environment for URM graduate students in SMEA.. Understanding the type of relationships necessary for social capital and URM student representation in graduate level marine science, is the impetus of this study.