STEM Education Researcher
Programs/Areas of Interest
- Experiences of Southeast Asian Americans in STEM
- Recruitment, retention, and persistence of marginalized groups in STEM
- Higher education and workplace experiences
- Arts-informed research methods
- Qualitative meta-synthesis methods
Biography
Christina B. Silva, B.S.W., is a Filipina American STEM Education Researcher at TERC. She is trained in arts-informed research and synthesis methods and has researched and evaluated the experiences, persistence, and retention of members of underrepresented groups in STEM higher education and careers. In utilizing arts-informed research methods, she is committed to uplifting the stories of marginalized groups and sharing them with broader communities. As a member of the Institute for Meta-Synthesis (IMS) team, she co-authored the IMS user guide and co-teaches workshop participants. Christina holds a Bachelor of Social Work degree from Simmons University.
Christina currently leads a project examining the experiences of Southeast Asian American women in STEM higher education. She concurrently serves as a facilitator for the IMS team and a researcher for two qualitative meta-synthesis projects.
Previous projects Christina served on include:
- Contemplative CRiT Collage (CCC) Methodology: A Pilot Study
- Native STEM Portraits: A Longitudinal, Mixed-Methods Study of the Intersectional Experiences of Native Learners and Professionals in STEM (NSP)
- BCSER: IRM: Institute for Meta-Synthesis: A Practicum through the Lens of STEM Equity and Inclusion Literature (IMS-SEIL)
- African American Young Women in Making to Engage in STEM and Entrepreneurship (AAMASE)
- Strengthening Middle School Mathematical Argumentation through Teacher Coaching: Bridging from Professional Development to Classroom Practice (Visualize Teaching)
- Native American Women and Two-Spirit Individuals in Computing Higher Education: A Photo Elicitation Study of Persistence (NAWC2)
- Literature Analysis and Synthesis of Women of Color in Technology and Computing (LASOW)
- Embodied Physics: STEM Learning for Under-Represented Youth
Education
- Bachelor of Social Work, Simmons University
Select Publications
Jaumot-Pascual, N., DeerInWater, K., Ong, M. et al. “I can do data for my people”: experiences of giving back for Native undergraduates in computing. Cult Stud of Sci Educ (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-023-10172-5
Jaumot-Pascual, N., Ong, M., Silva, C., & Martínez-Gudapakkam, A. (2021). Women of Color Leveraging Community Cultural Wealth to Persist in Computing and Tech Graduate Education: A Qualitative Meta-Synthesis. Education Sciences, 11(12), 797.
Ong, M., Jaumot-Pascual, N., Torres-Gerald, L., Silva, C.B., & Martínez-Gudapakkam, A. (2024). An introduction to qualitative meta-synthesis. TERC.
Silva, C. B., Jaumot-Pascual, N., & Ong, M. (2025). “We’re trying to break that misconception”: A single-case study on the role of giving back for a Filipina in computer science. EDULEARN25 Conference Proceedings, pp. 9917–9924. https://library.iated.org/view/SILVA2025WER
Silva, C.B., Jaumot-Pascual, N., Ong, M., & DeerInWater, K. (2021). “I think around the box”: Experiences of a Native two-spirit undergraduate student in computing. TERC’s Hands On! Magazine. https://www.terc.edu/hands-on-magazine-spring-2021
Silva, C.B., Jaumot-Pascual, N., Ong, M., & DeerInWater, K. (2021). What motivates Native computer science students? Winds of Change. https://read.nxtbook.com/aises/winds_of_change/spring_2021/what_motivates_native_compute.html
Silva, C.B., Ong, M., Jaumot-Pascual, N., Torres-Gerald, L., Madison, M., & Smith, T. (2025). Snapshots of Native Experiences in STEM. Winds of Change. https://read.nxtbook.com/aises/winds_of_change/spring_2025/spotlight_on_research.html
