Dimensions of Culturally-Intensive STEM Education: Looking to the Source

Disenfranchisement of indigenous Pacific voices from STEM limits self-determination and the development of Pacific-led solutions to regional challenges. To counteract this trend, Chaminade University's Inclusive Excellence program delivers culturally-sustaining STEM education focused on sense of belonging and family/community engagement. It seeks to authentically enculturate curriculum, pedagogy, and practice to privilege and separate Western and indigenous epistemologies and to provide deeply immersive nonacademic support. This chapter discusses the imperatives for sustained, system-wide commitment to culture-based STEM education, theoretical and cultural frameworks guiding this paradigm, examples of IE program processes and practices, and a review of outcomes. Finally, next level challenges are considered: student experiences in structurally racist systems beyond the Pacific support bubble, tensions between providing opportunity and perpetuation of regional talent drains, and the implications of asking young scientists to balance cultural and professional identities.