As a first-generation college student, where did you draw inspiration for attending college and how did you develop that college mindset?
AA: I remember the first time I heard the word college. I was in first grade and a teacher said to me, “Alvina, if anyone asks you if you are going to college, your answer should be yes.” That moment stands out in my mind because at the time, I did not know what college was, and I could not imagine someone ever approaching me and asking me if I was going to college. But surprisingly, the question did come up, and I do remember saying, “yes.”
GradFUTURES Forum to highlight professional development for graduate students
Denise Valenti, Office of Communications
April 23, 2021 10:10 a.m.
Photo by Danielle Alio, Office of Communications. Design by Lisa Festa, Center for Career Development.
Princeton University’s Graduate School will host its annual GradFUTURES Forum online from April 26-30, highlighting graduate student professional development and providing mentorship and resources that all master’s students and Ph.D. candidates can use as they explore diverse career opportunities.
The event, which will host more than 60 speakers from across academia and industry sharing their knowledge in 30-plus sessions, is free and open to the public.
The Scholar With the Skeleton Key chronicle.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from chronicle.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Imagine the first-generation students who end up at one of the top colleges in the country. They are largely from lower-income families and more likely to be minority students than the entire student body. They enter universities with amazing potential to provide academic and other resources. But are they well served? Are they happy? Should the universities be doing more? These are some of the questions Rachel Gable answers in
The Hidden Curriculum: First Generation Students at Legacy Universities (Princeton University Press). Gable, director of institutional effectiveness at Virginia Commonwealth University, conducted more than 100 interviews with first-generation students at Harvard and Georgetown Universities. She answered questions about the book via email.
Photograph by Harvard Magazine/JC
Among other findings, Harvard’s 2019 “pulse survey,” the foundation for much of the University’s current work on diversity and inclusion, revealed pronounced gaps between first-generation students and almost every other cohort in their degree of comfort within the community. In response to the baseline prompt, “I feel like I belong at Harvard,” just 59 percent of students whose parents had a middle-school education or less agreed; the figure was just 68 percent among those whose parents had high-school degrees. In contrast, among students, faculty, and staff members as a whole, 77 percent agreed including 74 percent of students (see https://pulse.harvard.edu/results).