Imagine you’ve never been to Liechtenstein.
You don’t speak the language. You’ve never sampled the food. You aren’t familiar with the culture or the customs. You don’t know anyone who has been there.
And you’re moving there, by yourself, as a teen or young adult.
Would you be apprehensive? Wouldn’t you want someone to answer your questions, offer expertise or be a source of help as you make the transition?
Arriving at Missouri State may not be the same thing as arriving in a new country. But for first-generation students — those who are the first in their families to ever attend college — the experience of university life can be just as confusing, frustrating, exciting and overwhelming as starting a new life somewhere else.
If these students leave college without a degree, they won’t earn a college-level job. They now have debt and limited ability to pay it off.
Supporting these students relates to our overall mission of developing a fully educated, ethical community. If this university recruits them, we are obligated to put them on a path to success.
Some Missouri State alumni, several of whom were themselves first-generation, are among faculty and staff members leading our efforts in recruiting, advising, teaching and retaining our first-gen students.
“I was completely unprepared for university-level work. I made all the classic mistakes of a first-generation student.”
“The more welcoming we are, the better”
Nora Cox, ’03 and ’05, started college at another school in the early 1980s.
“I was completely unprepared for university-level work. I made all the classic mistakes of a first-generation student.” She overscheduled classes and underestimated the time it would take to do projects.
Bottom line: She flunked out.
She took other paths to success, working part-time jobs while raising a family.
In the early 2000s, she began to notice what she called “weird pressure” from herself: “I had this feeling that I really need to finish my college degree before my children finish theirs.”
She enrolled at Missouri State, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in communication with a high GPA. She kept going, earning a master’s in communication.
“I’ve had the experience of being a really terrible student, and then being, frankly, a really excellent student.”
That experience helps her on the job now. She has worked at Missouri State since 2009, and is an advisor as well as an instructor; she has won university and national advising awards.
“First-gen students really do need to talk with people who have been through this,” Cox said. “The more welcoming we are, the better.”
She’s not the only staff or faculty member who can identify with these students.
“A lot of my colleagues on this campus are first-generation — these are people who now have master’s and PhDs,” she said.
“This conversation about first-gens has sparked more awareness on campus. People have said, ‘well, that’s me, too, that was my experience.’ I think that can be really good for students to see.”
“My parents had always spoken about college, so I was brought up knowing I was going. But I didn’t know how to research universities. I didn’t know which major I was going to pursue. I didn’t understand the financial-aid process. … It was a lot of figuring things out on my own.”
“Together, we fill in the gaps”
Dr. Tracey Glaessgen, ’97, ’02 and ’05, is one of Cox’s colleagues with the first-gen experience. She started at a community college and transferred to MSU.
“It’s very easy for me to understand our first-generation students. Together, we fill in the gaps for knowledge they don’t have.”
She now has four degrees — a bachelor’s and two master’s from MSU, and a doctorate from another institution.
She brought that experience to MSU when she started working here in 2006 as an advisor and instructor. She specialized in working with undeclared majors, and, like Cox, won university and national awards for advising.
Since 2014, she has led a special section of GEP 101 — the university’s general education first-year seminar course — dedicated to first-gen students who are undecided on a major.
Demetria Green was a peer leader for a first-generation GEP 101 course in fall 2016. Green, a senior who was first-gen herself, could talk with new students about resources that helped her.
A sense of empowerment
In fall 2016, senior Demetria Green stood in front of about 25 first-gen freshmen to introduce a guest speaker from Trio, federal programs that help Americans overcome class and social barriers to higher education.
“Trio really had a huge effect on my college life,” she told the students.
Green, a first-gen student from Kansas City, Missouri, was serving as a peer leader for Dr. Kelly Wood’s first-gen-only GEP course.
“This class gives them the feeling that ‘we’re all in this together, you can do it’ — it’s a sense of empowerment. This is not to hold their hands. It’s to take into account real differences and give them an extra push.”
When she started at MSU, she remembers feeling overwhelmed.
“I would call my mom crying because I was not getting adjusted,” Green said. “She could give me support and calm me down, but not give me any ‘how-to’ info.”
That type of info is exactly what MSU now puts front and center. In 2014, the university started a few sections of GEP 101 just for first-gen students.
“At orientation, advisors talked to incoming first-gens and said, ‘we’ve got these special sections, and we’d like you to be in one of them,’” Wood said. “For the most part, they did.”
These sections had more focus on building “cultural capital” — the knowledge and skills to adapt to the university.
Learning ‘Bear speak’
“College is its own little subculture, with strange terminology and vocabulary,” Wood said. “Then, they don’t have a family member who can say, ‘Hey, when you go to college, here’s some things you need to be prepared for.’ Once they’re here, every experience is completely new from the ground up.”
They may not know what a registrar’s or bursar’s office is, for example. In their GEP courses, students now have a chance to learn this “Bear speak.”
They might be introduced to deans and professors, learning about Missouri State’s academic structure. They might hear from student panels. They learn about offices and resources: Where to find a tutor. Where to apply for aid. Where to ask about a campus job. Where to go to get help with a résumé.
“We have seen improved retention numbers for students in these courses, not only from their first to second year, but second to third year. It’s higher than other first-gen students who are not in those designated sections.”
First-gen GEP by the numbers
These first-gen GEP sections seem to be working.
“We feel like what we’re doing is working for them. If anything, it’s being much more intentional and conscious in interacting with these students,” Wood said.
MSU is offering more first-gen sections this fall.
“We had 11 sections in fall 2016, and we’re looking to have upwards of 18 in fall 2017, which would potentially have all first-gen students in dedicated sections of GEP. That’s the goal.”
There are other initiatives for first-gens on campus as well, including residence-hall programming, workshops offered by financial aid and MSU: I’m First, a student organization formed in 2015.
Wood is considering steps to take in the future, such as peer mentoring between students and targeted training for advisors.
“We have been thinking about how these students enhance the experience of Missouri State,” Wood said. “I see many strengths they bring to campus. They have a lot of determination and grit. They are trailblazers. I think now they really feel like, ‘the school is paying attention to me and my needs.’”
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