Beyond Inclusion: Cultivating a Critical Sense of Belonging through Community-Engaged Research

A broad body of literature outlines the interventions to support underrepresented and minoritized students’ inclusion sense belonging into university contexts. In this paper, we explore how two first-generation students color articulate a critical through their reflections as student researchers in Apprenticeship Community-Engaged Research or (H)ACER program at University California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). integrates community engagement, ethnographic sensibilities, race decolonial theory, well women feminisms curriculum designed train scholar-researchers. Through themes feeling isolated on campus returning ‘home’ garden, building comfort with academic navigating insider/outsider identities campus/community contexts, trace developed an awareness positionality made experiences ‘belonging’, both within Their narratives spark our deeper exploration approaches community-engaged research may offer pedagogy for supporting that extends beyond inclusion, promising vein further research.