T. Mark Montoya, PhD
3/20/2017 3:14:28 PM
A first-generation college student experience
Very early in his college career, Mark was to meet with his academic advisor—a graying history professor. On the Monday morning the week of his open advisement, Mark repeatedly went to the professor’s office, knocking on the door about six different times throughout the morning. Mark had assumed that college professors worked an 8 to 5 job, not taking into account the professor’s teaching, research, and service—and certainly not really knowing what office hours meant. Frustrated, Mark went into the department office and asked how he could see his advisor. The very kind and patient woman explained to him the concept of office hours. Figuring that Mark was eager to get his advising paperwork signed, she said to him, “You can talk to the Department Chair.” Confused, Mark replied, “But I’d like to talk to a person.” Mark is now a college professor, hoping to help other faculty understand the myriad issues first-generation (1st-gen) college students, like himself, experience. Many are not aware of the needs of contemporary first-gen students, even if they were themselves 1st-gen. The reason for this is that many 1st-gen students understand their frustrations as a “normal” feature of college life. College is supposed to be difficult and confusing, right?
What we are doing
While college is indeed complicated, 1st-gen students often start in a predicament different from students whose parents went to and graduated from college: without the benefit of handed-down advice on resources, timelines, unwritten rules, and the like. 1st-gen students are essentially starting the “race” on an unequal and increasingly crowded field where the lack of social and cultural capital adds additional hurdles. How can faculty and staff help? Research has shown that we must proactively address the specific needs of 1st-gen students in order to cultivate these students’ success. Beyond the classroom and beyond the underutilized federal programs, 1st-gen students often need one-on-one mentoring and advising—guidance in navigating the university. For four and a half years now, an innovative Professional Development Learning Community of faculty and staff at Northern Arizona University (NAU) has been grappling with 1st-gen college student experiences. Sometimes we are a book club and other times we are hands-on trainers and facilitators, certifying colleagues as tiered 1st-gen allies, advocates, and activists. From our many meetings and discussions, we have developed the following slogan: “best practices for 1st-gen students are best practices for all students.”
How 1st-gen students perform once they get to the university is of utmost importance. This is especially true from a moral standpoint—if institutions raise students’ hopes by admitting them, then they should also provide accessible tools to support students’ success on campus. 1st-gen students are far less likely to graduate than their non-1st-gen peers As such, supporting and retaining 1st-gen students are critical not only to the University’s core value of “placing learner needs at the center of our academic and service planning, policies, and programs” but also to its survival as an institution. It is for this reason that NAU has constructed a growing suite of programs and initiatives designed to provide multifaceted, sustained support to its 1st-gen students. Like many universities, NAU has long provided advising, academic support, and financial guidance to hundreds of 1st-gen students. The First Generation Programs and Initiatives Office works across campus to coordinate existing resources, develop and cross-link web pages, and spread the word about programs, tools, and support for 1st-gen students.
What we need to do
Despite the availability of resources on-campus for 1st-gen students and their families, there are obstacles that often prevent students from making the best use of these resources. The first obstacle is awareness: not only are many students and parents unaware of these resources, but so are many faculty and staff. There is also the problem of identifying 1st-gen students. Currently, NAU relies on self-identification, which typically takes place in admissions forms, and not all 1st-gen students identify themselves as such. Moreover, only certain personnel on campus have access to information that would help to identify these students. NAU’s qualifications for 1st-gen consideration are aligned with the federal government’s qualifications: neither parent nor guardian has received a four-year degree. While 40-45% of the incoming freshmen at NAU self-identity as 1st-gen, based on anecdotal information from the Office of Admissions and Orientation we know there are more 1st-gen students.
The challenges of understanding the needs of and supporting the 1st-gen population at NAU are wide and varied, but we can make good progress if we focus on three action areas:
- Faculty and staff need to be trained to understand the NAU 1st-gen student population and their needs for support;
- faculty and staff need consistent guidance on what each person can do to help support these students; and
- faculty and staff must understand the resources available to that student population.
Together these three action areas point to the way to implementing best practices for 1st-gen students.
Best practices
1st-gen students benefit from targeted coursework. Why? The demographics of the United States are changing. Accordingly, the demographics of U.S. colleges and universities are changing. In the past several years, more universities have admitted more students of color and more students from low-income situations, contributing to an already greater number of 1st-gen students. This higher percentage of 1st-gen students can often mean more tutoring, more advising, and more mentoring than before. 1st-gen students, however, do not need remedial college courses, or University 101 courses, but instead general education or liberal studies courses such as Ethnic Studies, taught with students grouped in a cohort. Faculty ought to develop assignments connected to 1st-gen experiences, so that students participate in class activities together as mentors and mentees. The rationale is that students must pass these classes, because they are for-credit, not skills, classes.
1st-gen students need clear language associated with financial aid. Why? In addition to academic engagement through targeted courses, we must also address 1st-gen students’ financial needs and clarifications of language associated with financial aid. Most 1st-gen students have to work, at least, part-time while attending classes full-time. On-campus employment is essential and allows for additional study time, often becoming a true “work-study.” Besides academic and financial preparedness, the primary concern is graduation. Thus, any program needs to focus on the student for the entire four years of an undergraduate education. Too often, students are dropping out or being pushed out when they lose contact with their support system that had been there for them during their first year. Colleges and universities need to provide 1st-gen students with a continued sense of community and connectedness. It is not enough to get a 1st-gen student to college, if we are not equipping them with the tools they need to graduate—the tools ALL students need to graduate. It may be the difference between knocking on a door for several hours and actually talking to a person. Now, if Mark could only figure out how not to talk to empty chairs.
Dr. T. Mark Montoya is Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at Northern Arizona University (NAU), Co-Facilitator of NAU’s First-Generation Student Experiences Faculty/Staff Professional Development Learning Community, and member of the NAU Teaching Academy. This blog is an abridged version of a research report written by Montoya, Esther V. Cuellar, Mark Despain, Alicia Krzyczkowski, and Michael J. Rulon.