Eastern Michigan University faculty and students explore social and cultural influences of STEM students through their drawings

Researchers learn about students’ sense of belonging in their environment through their artistic efforts

Eastern Michigan University faculty and students explore social and cultural influences of STEM students through their drawings

YPSILANTI – According to new research at Eastern Michigan University, a picture may really be worth a thousand words.

By using student drawings to examine non-financial forms of wealth such as family, travel and professional and personal experiences in STEM students’ backgrounds, professor Carmen McCallum hopes to make the sciences more accessible to underrepresented students.    

“Social and cultural capital are important predictors of positive outcomes, like career success and sense of belonging,” said McCallum, a professor in the Department of Leadership & Counseling in the College of Education. “This is particularly important because we find that people in STEM have less cultural capital when they are from an underrepresented group. When they have lower social and cultural capital they have a lower sense of belonging.”

While some drawings were jam-packed with capital, including images of outdoor family adventures, parents, airplanes (travel experiences), teachers and undergraduate research and field experiences, other students drew a more isolated image. For example, one drawing features a student alone, with no other human influences, visiting a museum and then sitting under the stars and asking, “Why are we here?”   

McCallum’s principal experiment was conducted at the Geological Society of America’s 2016 Annual Conference in Boulder, Colo. Respondents were asked to draw a picture of the people and experiences that shaped their careers.

According to McCallum, while no significant difference in either capital group was observed across gender, evidence suggested that cultural capital differed significantly across ethnic groups. Non-white students depicted more social capital than cultural capital in their drawings.  

“At EMU this is important because we serve first generation college students and underrepresented groups, particularly in the sciences,” said McCallum. “Understanding disparities in capital and providing students with the knowledge and experiences that they need to be successful in STEM is one way to help students feel welcome in STEM and begin to diversify STEM fields.”

Research is ongoing to collect additional data and generate larger sample sizes needed to statistically confirm the findings of the original experiment. The ongoing project has been supported by the National Science Foundation.

McCallum’s research on social and cultural capital was honored at the 2018 EMU Faculty Showcase for Scholarly and Creative Activity on March 15, in which 35 faculty representing all five of the University’s colleges presented new research disseminated in the past calendar year.

In addition to McCallum, the ongoing project is supported by a collaboration of other faculty, graduate and undergraduate students from multiple universities, particularly Eleanor Rappolee, an undergraduate geoscience student at Michigan State University.

The Associate Provost and Assistant Vice President for Graduate Studies and Research oversees research support services at Eastern Michigan University. For more information about research conducted at Eastern, please contact the department at 734. 487.3090, or email orda_dept@emich.edu.

About Eastern Michigan University

Founded in 1849, Eastern is the second oldest public university in Michigan. It currently serves 20,000 students pursuing undergraduate, graduate, specialist, doctoral and certificate degrees in the arts, sciences and professions. In all, more than 300 majors, minors and concentrations are delivered through the University's Colleges of Arts and Sciences; Business; Education; Health and Human Services; Technology, and its graduate school. EMU is regularly recognized by national publications for its excellence, diversity, and commitment to applied education. For more information about Eastern Michigan University, visit the University's website.

August 22, 2018

Written by:
Vee Kennedy

Media Contact:
Geoff Larcom
glarcom@emich.edu
734-487-4400