Advising the firsts
First-generation students start their college careers with unique sets of challenges that may affect how they experience their post-secondary journey. In this presentation, I define what it means to be first-generation and how practitioners can incorporate student development theory in their programming. I use the W-Curve to frame the first-generation student experience and demonstrate the hurdles that many first-generation students face in progressing through college. While I focus on Advising interventions, I use the Community Cultural Capital Model and Validation Theory to demonstrate how practitioners can implement supportive scaffolding across campus domains. Advising the Firsts aims to spark curiosity and provide student affairs professionals with resources to continue learning about student-development theory and the first-generation student experience.
Community Cultural Wealth Theory; Yosso (2005) Source: San Francisco State University
Community seminar: recognizing community cultural capital
College and universities are often seen as inaccessible to the surrounding community. For many institutions located in cities, their growth is dependent on the physical, social, or economic displacement of the community they’re situated in. Many students transition in and out of colleges without meaningfully engaging in the community outside of the campus walls. At the same time, many students major in subjects that directly impact community development. There is a disconnect between the theory of education and practice. As a society, we treat education as a privilege instead of using education as a tactic towards dismantling oppressive structures. While post-secondary institutions pride themselves in fostering communities of innovative thinkers, they fail to create connections between communities. Community Seminar is an intervention into the insular practice of higher education that asks us to imagine a postsecondary education through an ethnic studies framework and gives students the tools to critique and dismantle oppressive structures in their communities and beyond.