First generation college students´ access to engineering social capital: Towards developing a richer understanding of important alters

The overarching goal of our collective body of work is to develop a conceptual model of engineering students´ development and utilization of social capital based on mixed-methods research. This paper makes a significant contribution to this long-term goal by utilizing qualitative methods to achieve a deeper understanding of first generation college students´ engineering-related academic and career choices. This paper presents results from interviews with eleven first generation college students attending five institutions in the United States. The interviews focused on important individuals (alters) in the students´ social networks who provided resources and information pertinent to participants´ decisions to enter and persist in engineering. Additionally, our findings describe the types of resources provided by the alters. Our current findings from this qualitative analysis identify additional important alters that were previously unexplored by our quantitative results. The results of this work are applicable to engineering educators and administration for the recruitment and retention of first generation college students.