The First Generation Student Experience (An ACPA Co-Publication) - Softcover

Davis, Jeff

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1579223702 ISBN 13: 9781579223700

Publisher: Routledge, 2010

Synopsis

Co-published with 

More first-generation students are attending college than ever before, and policy makers agree that increasing their participation in higher education is a matter of priority.

Despite this, there is no agreed definition about the term, few institutions can quantify how many first-generation students are enrolled, or mistakenly conflate them with low-income students, and many important dimensions to the first-generation student experience remain poorly documented. Few institutions have in place a clear, well-articulated practice for assisting first-generation students to succeed.

Given that first-generation students comprise over 40% of incoming freshmen, increasing their retention and graduation rates can dramatically increase an institution’s overall retention and graduation rates, and enhance its image and desirability.

It is clearly in every institution’s self-interest to ensure its first-generation students succeed, to identify and count them, and understand how to support them. This book provides high-level administrators with a plan of action for deans to create the awareness necessary for meaningful long-term change, sets out a campus acclimation process, and provides guidelines for the necessary support structures.

At the heart of the book are 14 first-person narratives – by first-generation students spanning freshman to graduate years – that help the reader get to grips with the variety of ethnic and economic categories to which they belong. The book concludes by defining 14 key issues that institutions need to address, and offers a course of action for addressing them.

This book is intended for everyone who serves these students – faculty, academic advisors, counselors, student affairs professionals, admissions officers, and administrators – and offers a set of best practices for how two- and four-year institutions can improve the success of their first-generation student populations.

An ACPA Publication

About this title

Book Description:

"Jeff Davis offers keen insight into the first-generation student experience with this readable, informative, and persuasive volume. Smartly pairing academic analysis with student narratives, Davis describes and demonstrates the key barriers to student success for this growing contingent of American students. He presents a range of promising recommendations to support the increasing number of first-generation students who are now enrolling in American higher education."―Diversity and Democracy

“This book provides concrete recommendations for practice in service to this growing population of undergraduates, and, thus, brings us several steps closer to an answer.”―Jennifer R. Keup, Director, National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition

Given that first-generation students comprise over 40% of incoming freshmen, increasing their retention and graduation rates can dramatically increase an institution’s overall retention and graduation rates.

This book provides administrators with a plan of action to create the awareness necessary for meaningful long-term change, sets out a campus acclimation process, and provides guidelines for the necessary support structures. First-person narratives by first-generation students help the reader get to grips with the variety of ethnic and economic categories to which they belong. The book concludes by defining 14 key issues that institutions need to address, and offers a course of action for addressing them.

About the Author:

Jeff Davis is an English professor, academic counselor, and administrator at Sonoma State University in California. He became interested in the plight of first-generation college students when he was exposed to the work being done with nontraditional students on the Sonoma State campus through federal TRIO grant projects, which led to his becoming Director of a TRIO Student Support Service project and a TRIO McNair Scholars project. He is currently involved in designing an institute for the study of the first-generation student experience to be housed at Sonoma State.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1579223702
• ISBN 13: 9781579223700
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240