Annually, first-generation college students are celebrated nationally on or during the week of Nov. 8 in tandem with the anniversary signing of the High Education Act of 1965. This is the third year that Dean Peter Parolin and the Honors College has held an event honoring first-generation students, faculty, and alumni at the University of Wyoming.
First generation or “first gen” refers to students whose parents did not complete a four year college degree. In a recent press release from the Dean of Student Success, Nycole Courtney, reports that 30-40% of students on campus are first gen.
On Nov. 7, the Honors College hosted a luncheon with a panel of first-gen faculty including:
Dr. Lori Howe of the Honors College, Dr. Seth Swanner of the English department, and Lucas Hanson and Hailey Dungan, both of the UW Foundation, with Dr. Breezy Taggart of the Honors College as the hostess.
While there were very few undergraduate students present, the panel had an opportunity to present to the Lander Valley High School who had students doing a prospective tour of campus.
Some of the topics discussed included: personal experiences or challenges in navigating their education or integration and what current resources are available to students.
“As a first-gen student, I was very fully first gen. My family never had even any aspirations for their children going to college, and so I felt that I could handle it. I was very eager to get to college,” Howe said.
“In a similar vein, I, being a first-gen student, was the only family member to aspire to attend, and still the only one to do so. There was so much pressure for success, but also this recognition of the unknowing in myself,” Dungan said.
“It’s really hard to see opportunities when you’re a first gen because you don’t know what they look like,” said Hanson. “Growing up, I grew up in a non-English household, my mom is not from this country, and so it was really impossible for her to motivate me with ‘you might be able to get this job’ or ‘you might be able to do this.’ So when you do run into that failure, it’s really easy to give up on that process [of achieving higher education].”
One of the other questions asked of the panel by an audience member revolved around overcoming stigmas first-generation students feel they sometimes face when returning to their communities where higher education seems taboo.
“I came from a rural community, some people didn’t go to college and a lot of people didn’t go away for college, and a lot of my family were sort of down on the idea of higher education,” Swanner said. “My best piece of advice for that would be to think of your own story and to think, ‘who am I as a person back there, and who am I as a person right now’ and what are the kind of narrative lines that I can connect between that person and this person.”
“Find that language. Where can you find that synergy between what values I am coming from and what values I have now and write them down to rely on during those hard conversations,” Taggart said.
Also in attendance, was the First Generation Organization from the University of Wyoming College of Law, as well as other programs such as TRIO from Student Success Services and representatives of UW advisors and admissions.
