Chapter 1: Using the Frameworks of Socialization and Acculturation to Understand the Trajectory of Scientists of Color

Numerous efforts to diversify the STEM-education pipeline have occurred over the past decades. These efforts target different segments of the education system, including K‑12 education, undergraduate education, and graduate education. The intent of racial-ethnic diversification efforts across the education pipeline is to increase the number of scientists of color to better reflect the overall U.S. population and embrace the full potential of the country’s capacity for producing scientific research. Women of color, for example, are underrepresented in STEM-degree completion rates when compared to the percentage of minority female U.S. citizens (Ong, Smith, & Ko, 2018), while Black men accounted for only 4% of students enrolled in undergraduate engineering programs (Strayhorn, 2015). However, despite numerous efforts on an institutional and policy level, diversity levels among STEM professionals overall show marginal and uneven growth, raising questions about how to best encourage young scientists of color to pursue and persist in STEM careers. Using conceptual frameworks of socialization and acculturation, this chapter explores the pipeline into graduate STEM programs for scientists of color and their experiences once enrolled.