Recognizing and Supporting First-Gen Strengths
About one-third of enrolled UCSC students are first-generation college students, meaning their parents or caretakers have not received a degree from a four-year institution. As educators, we can aim to understand the unique strengths first-gen students bring to our campus and adopt teaching strategies that foster belonging while addressing the institutional challenges they may face.
Resources
- UCSC’s First-Gen Initiative — Part of a UC-wide effort to serve faculty, staff, students, and alumni. Includes resources for undergraduates, graduate students, and parents/guardians, as well as information about upcoming events.
- First-Generation Student Reflections Booklet — A collection of stories and advice created through surveys and conversations with 19 first-gen students in their first year, developed by the Collaborative Research for Equity in Action (CREA).
- Teaching First-Generation Latinx Students — An Inside Higher Ed article by Alicia M. Reyes-Barriéntez offering strategies individual professors can use to support first-gen students effectively.
Additional Readings
Learn more about the experiences of first-generation students from the Collaborative Research for Equity in Action (CREA) group’s recent publications:
- Stories of conflict, agency, and hope: Master narratives underlying home-school mismatches for first-generation Latina students (Valle & Covarrubias 2024)
- What institutions can learn from the navigational capital of minoritized students (Covarrubias, Laiduc, & Valle 2022)
- Facets of family achievement guilt for low-income, Latinx and Asian first-generation students (Covarrubias et al. 2021)
- “You never become fully independent”: Family roles and independence in first-generation college students (Covarrubias et al. 2019)
- “Dropping out is not an option”: How educationally resilient first‐generation students see the future (Azmitia et al. 2018)
See Also
Equity-Minded Teaching
Supporting Multilingual Learners
Supporting Transfer Students