BY DANIELLE LEGARE

The study was authored by Danielle Vegas Lewis, ’23 alumna of GSE’s higher education PhD program and postdoctoral associate in UB’s Department of Engineering Education in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Ryan Taughrin, ’EdM 12, GSE assistant dean for enrollment management and student in GSE’s higher education PhD program; and Megan Iantosca, GSE associate professor of educational leadership and policy.

The project grew out of a larger collaboration with sociologist Shelley Kimelberg and the organization Pipeline-to-Progress (PtP), which partners with students seeking entry to selective, college-preparatory high schools. Iantosca learned about PtP through Kimelberg and invited Lewis and Taughrin—both doctoral students at the time who had taken her courses and were eager for hands-on research—to conduct interviews and transcribe and code the data.

“Much of the work on social mobility programs like PtP focuses on what students gain from participation; while this is important to measure, we were interested in shifting the perspective to look at what students bring to these programs,” Iantosca said. “It was important to us to show that students and their families are not just passive recipients of programs like PtP, but actively engaged in educational pursuits before, during and after their participation.”

Using the Community Cultural Wealth framework, the authors focused on familial capital—the knowledge, networks and resources within families and extended kin. Participants described how parents, caregivers and siblings shared program information, creating “family lineages” that eased transitions and provided emotional and material support, helping students persist in academically demanding settings.

They found that families pursued mobility through PtP in ways grounded in collectivist values, not the individualist narrative that often dominates discussions of “merit.”

For Lewis and Taughrin, the paper also represents a model of mentorship and collaborative authorship. “This paper would not exist if it were not for Megan’s support," said Lewis.

After presenting early findings at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting in 2021, the manuscript went through multiple rejections before finding the right editorial home.

“Megan was right there with us every step of the way, saying, ‘We got rejected this time, but we will not in the future. We will submit this again. She really believed in it,’” Lewis said. “We just would not give up. We knew it was a good paper.”

That persistence offered a start-to-finish look at research and publishing for the student coauthors.

“Megan—as an advisor, faculty member, researcher and mentor—gave us real-world research experience and let us see the process unfold in real time,” said Taughrin. “We got to experience everything, from interviewing participants and conducting data analysis to developing the codebook, writing the literature review and working collaboratively to figure out what was and wasn’t working. We really got to see the entire research process through from start to finish.”

While the authors emphasize that programs like PtP can expand opportunity, they also hope the field moves beyond a narrow focus on “the best and the brightest.”

According to Taughrin, there is a need for structures that reach more students whose potential emerges on different timelines and that recognize the everyday expertise that families bring to educational spaces.

“We’re seeing programs like this lose funding nationally,” Taughrin said. “But we know from experience the complicated yet important ways that this kind of support changes the lives of minoritized and underrepresented students—those who might not otherwise see themselves in higher education or certain careers.”

More than anything else, the team is grateful for what they learned from one another.

“What stood out to me the most was the learning from and with Danielle and Ryan during this collaboration. Their perspectives, insights and analyses were critical and helped me view the data in new ways,” Iantosca said.