The Equity in Graduate Education Resource Center just released their newest research-based resource guide, “Identifying and Leveraging Community Cultural Wealth in Physics Bridge Programs.” This guide is designed to help students in bridge programs recognize and become empowered by the cultural wealth they possess, since these forms of cultural wealth are often overlooked and unacknowledged by the academy.
This research-based guide was developed from the findings of an NSF INCLUDES Alliance-IGEN Research Hub Project, which was led by Geraldine Cochran at the Ohio State University. Cochran and her team interviewed 8 students in American Physical Society Bridge programs at four institutions to identify the forms of cultural capital that physics graduate students utilize in their educational experiences. A primary goal of this project was to employ asset-based models to understand the experiences of racially minoritized students in physics education. This guide is one way to encourage and promote the use of such models in physics and beyond.