STEM Pushout and Redirection of HMoob American College Students at a Predominantly White Institution. WCER Working Paper No. 2024-4

Asian Americans as a group are overrepresented among STEM college graduates and have the highest average college enrollment rate of any racial or ethnic category. Thus, Asian Americans are typically excluded from educational interventions directed at improving STEM education for Students of Color because they are not considered to be underrepresented minorities. However, statistics obscure the individual needs of the more than 20 ethnic subgroups that fall under the umbrella term Asian Americans. Using a participatory action research approach, this paper documents the institutional and sociocultural factors that push out HMoob (or Hmong) American college students from STEM programs at one large, predominantly White university; and the coordinate processes of gatekeeping and transactional advising that either redirect those students toward non-STEM programs or force them out of the university completely.