ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. STEM Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1601579
This article is part of the Research TopicRural STEMM Education Research: Bridging between Uniqueness and UniversalityView all 10 articles
"Contributing to Something Good": Rural Latinx College Students' Giving Back through STEMM Degrees and Careers
Provisionally accepted
- University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, United States
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Pursuing STEMM majors and careers is generally challenging, and this is further exacerbated for rural students who lack the necessary academic preparation and exposure to STEMM fields, as well as limited employment opportunities in their local communities and regions. Still, rural communities nurture STEMM interests and talent. This qualitative research study, using a Chicana/Latina feminist plática methodology, employs an asset-based perspective and a giving back theoretical framework to examine rural Latinx college students’ pursuit of STEMM. This study finds that rural Latinx college students' intersectional identities and geographical backgrounds are central to their STEMM pursuits. Some of the ways they give back include (a) helping and leading through STEMM extracurricular activities, (b) choosing socially conscious STEMM career paths, and (c) addressing place-based inequities in rural areas. This article discusses implications for rural-serving school districts, higher education institutions, and researchers aiming to increase rural students’ pursuit of STEMM.
Keywords: STEMM, rural STEMM, rural Latinx, Giving back, asset-based, Intersectionality, Geography, higher education
Received: 28 Mar 2025; Accepted: 08 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Puente, Romero, Rios Arroyo and Gutierrez-Serrano. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Mayra Puente, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, United States
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