Abstract

Cultural profiles offer a qualitative strategy for representing science identity in island-based SteM contexts without reducing participants to demographic categories, program outcomes, or linear pathways. this article develops the strategy through fieldwork with Workforce Fellows of the NSF SeAS Islands Alliance in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, a geomarine SteM learning ecosystem. drawing on story-based inquiry, funds of knowledge, the braided river meta- phor, and an ecological lens, we examine how two emerging island-based scientists narrate who they are, where they come from, and how they imagine their scientific futures. organized around six analytical lenses, the profiles show how participants use, revise, and exceed institutional labels as they author identities grounded in place, family, community responsibility, and racial formation. the strategy shifts attention from what programs add to what partici- pants carry, arguing that staying in, returning to, and working for one’s island constitute critical scientific commitments within STEM