Black men, underrepresented in engineering, constitute a missing segment of the population who could contribute to the global knowledge economy. To address this national concern, stakeholders need additional research on strategies that aid in Black men's persistence. This study explores the experiences of 30 Black men in engineering graduate programs. Three factors are identified as helping them persist from year to year, and in many cases through completion of the doctorate: the role of family, spirituality and faithbased community, and undergraduate mentors. . He studies the experiences of graduate students in STEM, and the institutional policies and practices that influence students' educational and workforce pathways. He also investigates participation in research experiences (i.e., the science of team science). KRYSTAL L. WILLIAMS, PhD, is an assistant professor of higher education in the Educational Leadership, Policy and Technology Studies Department of The University of Alabama College of Education. Her research explores the use of public policies to promote college success for underrepresented students, with an emphasis on the interplay between policy initiatives and students' various psychosocial factors. Recently, her work has focused on these issues as they relate to (1) broadening participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics for underrepresented groups and (2) reducing students' role strain in college. GORDON J. M. PALMER is a PhD candidate in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education at the University of Michigan. His research centers on spirituality, sociopolitical and prosocial development, and critical consciousness among Black college students and emerging adults across the African diaspora.

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Social science research offers a particular, narrow view of the lived experiences of Black urban-residing people. When the religious and spiritual lives of Black urban residents are viewed through this narrow lens, the diversity of religious and spiritual experiences and the connections between everyday life and positive outcomes, such as compassion, hope, liberation, joy, etc., become flattened, doing a disservice to the very people whose experiences we aim to understand. We contend that understanding the link between religiosity, spirituality, and positive development among Black urban-residing people requires us to pay attention to the ways that faith helps Black people to navigate the sequelae of five distinct sociopolitical features of urban life. We propose a conceptual framework that links these sociopolitical factors to religiosity, spirituality, and positive development among Black youth and adults residing in urban spaces. We conclude with recommendations applicable to the study of Black urban religiosity and spirituality.

In social science and popular parlance, Black low-income fathers continue to be represented as largely absent, disengaged, and negligent. These negative representations belie emerging qualitative and quantitative empirical data that demonstrate Black fathers, across lines of class, are constructively and responsibly involved in the lives of their children. The present study used qualitative data from 2 focus groups (n ϭ 6 and n ϭ 5) and 9 individual interviews with low-income, urban-residing Black men who are coresiding caregivers to young children (M child age ϭ 47.9 months, SD ϭ 11.4) to clarify how these men conceive of and pursue positive parenting. Caregivers were recruited from 11 Head Start programs in New York City. Interviews lasted 90 -120 min and were transcribed verbatim. Content and thematic analysis of verbatim transcripts yielded 23 thematic codes related to men's views of positive parenting. Themes revealed that fathers constructed positive parenting as a "generative" enterprise. However, generativity for these fathers reflected different concerns from generative parenting as conceived in extant literatures. In particular, our findings suggest the need to expand existing understandings of generative parenting by attending to challenges of emotional honesty, authenticity, dignity, and community. Public Significance StatementOver the past decade, more than $100 million in federal funding has been targeted to promoting positive fathering, particularly among low-income Black fathers. However, the success of such initiatives depends on leveraging how low-income Black men conceive of and enact positive parenting. This study contributes to the public good by offering evidence of men's conceptualizations and enactments of what it means to parent well.

Social scientists have paid scant attention to factors relating to pessimism among Black American men. Drawing from Fankl’s existentialist framework, this study explored the association between life stress, everyday racism, existential well-being (EWB), religiosity and self-reported pessimism among a community sample of Black men ( n = 147). Regression analysis revealed that life stress was positively associated with pessimism, while EWB was negatively associated with pessimism. Relative weights analysis indicated that EWB had the greatest explanatory power in the model. Findings suggest that future studies of pessimism among Black American men should account for men’s sense of purpose and life stress, while also considering the potentially moderating effects of chronic and acute life stress on men’s future orientation.