Through the lens of resilience-based student success frameworks, this article aims to illustrate how small-scale individual actions such as early outreach and student advocacy work, can bolster student outcomes and surround first-generation, low income, and underrepresented college students with a community of support.

This essay is a discussion of the lived experiences of first-generation college students each August when they arrive on a college campus for the first time. The author's approach offers a reflective component for institutions of higher education to consider when creating support or programs for first-generation students as they navigate an…

Students who are the first in their families to attend college and have Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status, question whether they will be welcomed, accepted, and safe in their relationships and on campus. Setting the stage for this paper, the authors provide definitional overviews of DACA, first-generation to college status, and…

In this article, the authors describe how college transition programs and campuses can go about creating and curating a major and career ecology to support at-promise students and their major and career success. They review literature about the systemic barriers and lack of institutional support for at-promise students as it relates to their major…

This study was designed to understand the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the family's role in their students' college experiences. Specifically, the authors examined parents' attitudes towards institutions' COVID-19 decision-making, parents' perceptions of communication quality between families and institutions during the COVID-19…

The Arnold Mitchem Fellows Program (AMF) is a co-curricular, undergraduate research program where first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students learn about basic research skills in preparation for future undergraduate research opportunities and graduate school outside of their traditional for credit classes. This academic year-long…

The alarming low completion rates in postsecondary education for Latinx students should be a national concern. Teachers can have a strong and direct impact on the academic success of students. College students spend a large portion of their time interacting with faculty in class or during office hours. To assist Latinx students in getting to the…

Shonda L. Goward argues that conflating first-generation and low-income status elides the specific and significant barriers poor students experience. They may share the experience of not being familiar with the university system, but the challenges of food insecurity, jobs, and family responsibilities, along with a lack of a safety net, make it…

Louis V. Macias reminds us that educators' attitudes toward first-generation students have a great impact on their eventual success … or failure. Are you serving the best interests of your students with an inspirational, success-oriented mind-set that considers all of their capabilities?

In this article, the author describes the Involvement Center and Peer Involvement Advising Program at Stephen F. Austin State University which were developed to address the important and persistent problems in higher education. Early indications are that the program is quite effective in doing so. In its second full year of existence, the…

In 2007, "About Campus" published the author's article "Humble and Hopeful: Welcoming First-Generation Poor and Working-Class Students to College." It has been used as a handout in various student orientations, included as a chapter in Teresa Heinz Housel and Vickie Harvey's "The Invisibility Factor: Administrators and…

College campuses look different today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, than they did 50 years ago. The buildings and signage may look almost the same, but the students who learn in those buildings definitely do not. Increased access and the diversity movement have resulted in younger and older students sitting side by side in the…

The work of helping students succeed on urban commuter campuses may be some of the most complicated in higher education. Even in understanding their tasks, educators at city-based institutions must typically draw on research and practice from an amalgam of other types of institutions, including community colleges, metropolitan universities, urban…

The author has become increasingly drawn to the notion of cultural capital and its explanatory function in regard to the experience of students in higher education, particularly students whose families have not shared the privilege granted by a college education. Through seasons of watching Little League, the author has discovered that there is…

Natasha is a nursing student with a 4.0 grade point average, a first-generation East Indian American, and the first woman in her family to go to college. Lugging a twenty-five-pound book bag of texts that cause her slight frame to slump forward under the weight, she carries a far heavier burden of familial expectation and pride. She has expressed…