- [Virajita] Okay, everyone,
let's start back our sessions,
and the next session is "As I See It:
"First generation College
Students and Photo Narratives"
by Rashne Jehangir and Kelly Collins.
(audience applauds)
- Wow, thanks.
So I just got this microphone
and I feel like I'm gonna
sell you a really nice broom
at the State Fair.
(audience laughs)
'Cause that's what it
makes me think about.
But these podiums are
not universally designed
so they're often larger than I am
and so I'm just gonna improvise
by standing on the side
and using this microphone.
I wanna say how grateful
I am to be here today,
particularly because it is
National First-Generation College Day
and it's a amazing journey
in this work of 25 years
to arrive at a time when
we actually have a day
that is National
First-Generation College Day.
If you are first in your
family to go to college,
I wonder if you'd be willing
to just raise your hand,
because I think it's important
to recognize the expertise in the room
and I think part of the work
of National First-Generation College Day
is to make the invisible visible
and these are steps towards that.
So "As You See It" is a research project
that I conducted in partnership
with the TRIO Student
Support Services Program
and draws on photovoice data,
which we'll be sharing with you.
So after sitting and eating lunch,
we'll have a little opportunity actually
to get up and walk around,
which is probably good.
I wanna set the stage a little bit
by talking about how we can situate
first-generation college
students' experience
in the narrative of higher education,
particularly around their
intersectional identities,
and talk a little bit
about the methodology
that has shaped this work
as participatory action research.
Then give you a chance to
experience the gallery,
invite your commentary on the
gallery after you've seen it,
and then Kelly Collins,
whose own lived experience
as a first-gen college
student and graduate student
has informed the analysis
and writing of a lot of this research,
will talk a little bit about
the findings that have emerged.
And then hopefully we can conclude
with some implications for practice
in your own spaces of work.
I'm noting that we're starting
about 10 minutes late, Virajita,
and I'm on a super tight clock,
so does that mean I have 10 more minutes,
or does it--
- We can try.
- We can try, okay, okay.
That determines how fast I talk.
(woman laughs)
One of the things I'd like to share,
because this is visual data,
is to think about how
first-gen students' experience
can be typified in visual ways.
I like this cartoon
because I think in some
ways it demonstrates
the way in which higher education
has well-intentional welcomes to students
who are first in their
family to come to college,
but they often present those welcome
in a language, in an outfit, in a clothing
that is often unfathomable
to the audience that they seek to welcome.
In my book I call this experience
that of being in an alien
landscape without a guidebook,
and that the chasm between
where the student stands
and where the higher ed door opens
often feels too wide to cross.
So in some ways, the onus
then rests on the student
to figure out how to cross this chasm.
Another way to describe this chasm
is captured by Carol Law Leste
in a book on working class scholars
that she wrote along with others
called "This Fine Place So Far From Home."
And in the book, she says:
"At home, I could never get myself
"to talk about books or ideas
"that never intersected
with the lives of my mother,
"my brother, cousins, and extended family.
"To talk about my studies seems ridiculous
"and stuck up at best
"in a context that seems
as mistrustful of academia
"as academia is condescending of it."
Similarly, one of her
colleagues, John Wilson, wrote,
"The whole process of becoming educated
"was for me a process of losing faith."
So for me, my interests,
I started my career as an academic advisor
in the TRIO program
and a lot of that shaped my perceptions
and understanding of
how we talk about equity
in higher education and for whom.
So for me, that work, that practice,
and then the questions that
have followed in my research
are questions that are intending
to understand the context and content
and culture of first-gen students
and why these feelings
come to rise for them.
So for us, I think the question is,
how do spaces and places,
policies and procedures,
pedagogy and practice feed into the chasm
and what are we doing to challenge it?
What are we doing to restructure it?
That is, in a way, what
my work is trying to do.
Just wanna say a little bit
about who first-generation students are.
I won't be reading all of this,
but I will share it
with you as a resource.
Also, on your tables there
are a resource handout
and all the references that are cited here
on the document, on the PowerPoint,
are contained in there
should you want to use them,
and others are there for future reference.
So anything that you see on here
should be referenced in
that reference document.
So you can see from this
slide that first-gen students,
first of all, not a
homogenous group in any way.
They're not a monolithic group.
They comprise 1/3 of
today's college students.
Here at the University of Minnesota,
they are 26, 27% of our
undergrad population.
I haven't got firm numbers
on the graduate student population,
but when I tried to get
some it said 11 to 12%.
I would conjecture that it's
quite a bit higher than that,
and then we should find
ways to tap into that data.
In Minnesota in particular,
that number is rising overall,
partly because of the way
refugee and immigrant communities
have chosen to enrich Minnesota
by making it their home.
Another thing that's important to note
is that first-gen students are poor
and working class, disproportionately,
as well as female and students of color.
For many, English is not
their first language.
And importantly, while many of them
cross that chasm to make it to college,
the extent to which they are
retained is significantly lower
than that of the
non-first-generation counterparts,
which says that it's a promise unfulfilled
in spite all the effort to get there.
The other part I want to say
is that sometimes I'm asked,
why do we consider this
group a student group
because of its variation?
And I want to talk about that
in the way in which first-gen students
have been historically
talked about in higher ed.
Again, this is a slide that you can read,
but just to demonstrate to
you that I'm not making it up,
I have here excerpts
from a number of articles
from journals in higher education
and I just want us to look at the language
that is used to characterize
the first-gen experience.
So some of it I've highlighted in red
just to draw your attention to it.
There is often "this lack of knowledge,"
"lacking in both personal
skills and social support,"
"at-risk students who are
conscientious and agreeable,"
"first-gen students lack
motivation, lack direction."
Lack, lack, lack, lack, lack.
So when your whole experience
is defined as a deficit experience,
it shouldn't surprise people
that students don't feel
welcomed in this space.
And when we look back
at the demographics that I shared earlier,
those aren't to say that there aren't
some significant challenges
born out of educational inequity
from the K through 12 system,
sort of birth through,
that we don't need to attend to,
but there's also a way in which
demography does not have to be destiny.
And if we repeat it in ways
that characterize it as such,
we give students an impression
that they don't belong.
I don't know any student
who would identify themselves as at-risk,
who would say, that is an identifier
by which I talk about
my personhood, no one.
So it reminds us of how language
shapes how we think about groups,
and particularly, who then gets delegated
to deal with the work of those groups.
So in the data that I have shared here,
and I'll show you the data
specifically around the demographics,
social class, immigrant status, and race
are very salient to the
identities of first-gen students
because in our campus
and in our TRIO program
and given the geographical
location of our institution,
the students we admit who are first-gen
often have these intersecting identities.
So just to say a little bit
about this idea of intersectionality.
So first-gen students inhabit spaces
where interaction of
race, class, and gender
impact not only their access to college
but also their aspirations
about how they will
negotiate this place here.
Now, there have been in higher
ed substantive critiques
of how people are using intersectionality
when they actually just
mean multiple identities,
so I wanna comment on my
use of it here as well.
So we look at interaction
as a way to name structural oppression
and because students in this study
and many students who are
first-gen on this campus,
because their experiences fall
within one or more of these circles,
they have had to negotiate individual,
organizational, and structural oppression
not only on this campus
but in multiple facets of their life
before they even arrived here.
And once they get here,
the efforts to unpack hidden curriculum,
explicit and implicit
expectations of the academy,
don't rest in any one of these identities
but often coalesce around
where students may find
an intersection with them.
And this matters because
then when we think
about programmatic responses,
classroom responses to it,
we have to think about the students
in that complex, holistic way
as opposed to assuming
that one or the other
category of programming will
respond adequately to it.
In fact, students may or
may not see themselves
or self-identify in any
one of these categories,
depending on the salience of
the location in which they sit.
It's this nature of having invisible
and visible identities simultaneously.
So I share that one of the advantages
of thinking about it
through intersectionality
is that we are,
to use Marilyn Frye's idea,
we're not looking at a
bird trapped in the cage
looking at the single bar and saying,
why doesn't the bird
just fly out of the cage?
We're recognizing that the
cage has multiple bars,
and those bars work together to constrain
in ways that challenge the freedom,
the freedom of expression,
the freedom of agency.
So one way to think about
it is the intersection,
intersectionality allows us
to think of it from a certain lens.
That is particularly important.
And that there are reciprocal
constructing phenomena
that shape social inequalities
for students in various
places in their lives.
So the choice for me in this
project to use photovoice
is because it is a participatory
action research method
and it invites students to
be the drivers of the data
in ways that other
forms of research don't.
Photovoice is a method
that actually grew out of public health,
which I think of as a very applied field,
and grew out of a study, originally,
looking at issues of public
health in rural China,
where women were trying
to talk about their issues
and didn't have the words
or the context in which
to articulate them.
And so photographs was a medium
by which there was a sort of
a universal way to look at it,
and that's how photovoice originated.
It does draw on feminist and interpretive
and gender and street art
as means of shaping sort
of the ontological roots
of how we engage in this method.
So the partnership with
the TRIO program came about
because the TRIO program recognized
that students need a space
in which to negotiate that
chasm that I talked about,
and a space in which to
negotiate it with peers
who look, not always,
but look or have had
experiences that are like them.
And so they created a one credit course
around first-gen identity
that I think actually could
be a national template,
and I keep telling them that.
And the course invited students
to work together to navigate
components of being in
college for the first time,
but contextualize their
experiences as first-gen students,
as students of color,
as immigrant students,
talked about issues like
finances and financial aid.
And this assignment,
the art you see here was
derived from assignments
that were built into that class,
so that students could
then share the outcome
not only with the faculty
member teaching it
but with each other,
which fed into this
participatory action space.
So while they were taking the course,
they were invited to take photos
around the core topics
the course was exploring:
social class, multiple identities,
vocational identity and direction,
college student identity, and so forth.
So you will see that the photos
resonate with those themes
from which they took the photos.
You can see from the data here
that this was a very diverse group.
86% were from low-income households
or Pell Grant eligible
and the majority of the participants
in this study were female,
primarily because that
actually does reflect
gender proportionalities of students
coming into the TRIO program.
Many also identified as immigrant students
and acknowledged speaking
more than one language at home
or not speaking English at home.
So all of these shape
how they have presented their data
in the form of these photographs.
So some of us would argue
that photographs furnish evidence, right?
As Susan Sontag does.
Something we hear about
but we kinda doubt,
if we see it, seems real.
Seems logical 'til you think
of social media and Twitter
and also who's standing behind the lens.
In 2018, National Geographic,
which has been known for the
photographs that it's taken,
did sort of an audit of
their history, right?
And in doing the audit of their history,
they determined accurately that
photographs, like articles,
didn't simply emphasize difference
but made difference exotic, strange,
and put difference into a hierarchy.
And the hierarchy was clear,
that the West,
especially English-speaking
world, was at the top,
and black and brown people
were somewhere underneath this.
I share this because rooted in photovoice
is the question of,
what is chosen to take?
Who takes the photo?
Who frames the narrative around the photo?
And we are challenged by that all the time
when we open a magazine
or open a newspaper
or open it up on your device.
Whose narrative has shaped the
positionality of that photo?
And so this assignment
and the research that we're doing
is to shift the positionality
and to shift who is behind the lens.
I also wanna reiterate,
because this is the case
sometimes with qualitative data,
it's assumed that it's anecdotal,
and I want to reiterate
that this is not anecdotal.
It is data in the form of story,
because there's value in
moving past abstraction
in talking about this university,
this woman, this place, this time.
Finally, photos are the
currency of our time.
We're not sure if we've eaten breakfast
if there hasn't been a photo taken of it
and shared on social
media with our friends.
That is proof that breakfast
has indeed been eaten.
So there's a communicative
currency to this
that students are very familiar with,
and really adroit at in ways
that I don't think I am.
So part of it was also to tap
into a language of the academy
that is not necessarily ours but theirs,
and give them the capacity
to tell stories as counter-narratives.
If I had more time,
I would practice doing
a little visual thinking
strategy with you,
but I don't have enough time.
So I think I'm gonna pause here.
In your booklet,
you will see that there is a opportunity
to do a brief reflection on the photos
as you walk around and look at them.
Those of you who are
following along remotely,
there is a PDF that I
think has been sent to you
that includes all the
photos and the narratives
that those who are here
presently will be reviewing.
So what I'd like to do
is give you 15 minutes
to walk around the gallery,
to look at the photos and the narratives,
and then jot down your
responses and reactions
and we'll come back and do a brief sharing
of what you see and how you know,
and then move on to what our findings are.
Thank you.
I'm gonna ask folks to come back.
(audience chattering)
We'd love your feedback
on the prompts that
emerged from the gallery
and the conversations that
may have come from your table.
And after we hear from you,
we'll share a little bit
more about the findings
from the amalgam of the 138 photographs.
Anybody willing to start us off
in terms of responses to
the prompts or questions,
photographs you connected with?
Photographs that raised questions?
Thank you.
- [Caleb] One thing that, oh, thank you.
Hi, I'm Caleb, he/him/his.
One thing that struck me
as I was reading something
that Ivy had said was the,
the subtext in what
wasn't explicitly stated.
And I thought that was very interesting.
In Ivy's, for example, it starts out,
"For a campus that promotes diversity,"
and then it goes on and--
- [Rashne] It's this one
right here, right, Caleb?
- [Caleb] Yes, that's right.
- [Rashne] Yeah, just so
that others can follow.
- Yep, exactly.
- Yep, mm-hmm.
- [Caleb] And I thought
that was interesting,
because of course as
we're reading the text
we don't get any of the verbal cues
that might indicate the
emotion behind something.
But my read on this was that this is,
you know, it's a purported value
while not actually being reflected
in this person's day-to-day life.
So just a reflection.
- [Rashne] Yeah.
And I think that subtext
was a lot of what the analysis
took so much time around,
that it was the relationship
between the photo and the text
but also the unsaid that
often sat underneath it.
And when Kelly talks about the themes
that emerged around diversity,
there'll be some more
responses to your point.
Thank you for sharing that.
Other thoughts or photos that resonated?
- [Man] There's an online observation.
- [Rashne] Okay, great.
- [Man] "I'm especially struck
by Ivy's photo and words.
"At first glance, it's
incredibly ordinary.
"Some students walking along
"University Avenue with shopping bags.
"I see this scene all the time.
"For Ivy, this brings up her loneliness.
"As a young white woman
"who could easily blend in in this photo,
"I feel reminded to bring more presence
"into my everyday experiences."
- [Rashne] Thank you.
So it's interesting that
two people in the audience
have picked up on that photo
and the relative ordinariness of it,
something that we see every day,
and how that impacts
feelings of isolation for some students.
Other photos?
- [Woman] I also had
feelings about Ivy's photo,
but I'll mention the
photo directly below that,
to the left of the M Bridge.
Also, those two photos
kind of in conjunction.
- This one?
- This one,
and yeah, and Ivy's photo.
- Yes, yeah.
- [Woman] The photos themselves,
aside from the words,
represent physical landscapes
that really meant
something to the students.
And I'm sure as most of us know,
those physical landscapes
has changed a lot.
And so it got me thinking of a question
of like, I wonder for students who either
experienced these changes
as they were students,
so for the M Bridge specifically,
if that was your bridge to academia
and to feeling connected to campus,
and it's gone, how does that affect you?
Or, if you're looking back
when you were a student,
and now it's different.
I don't know, it got me thinking
about my own personal
experiences as a student here
and how those two photos, I think,
particularly represent landscapes
that are literally gone.
So that's what I was experiencing.
- [Rashne] So I'm hearing
two things in there.
The first is what we saw a lot of,
which was the metaphoric
representation of journey
in different forms, bridges, pathways,
and you see those in a
number of the photographs,
often representing the way a bridge
sort of binds one world and another world
and the act of crossing and recrossing
and code switching as
you're doing that crossing.
So all of that.
But I'm also hearing you
say something very specific
about the physicality of a landscape
and particular places that
derive meaning for you
and what happens when
those places are gone.
Thank you, that's a really
interesting insight.
Anybody else who'd like to
share a response to a photo
or a question about a photo?
Yeah?
- [Woman] I'll just have a question,
and it's also one that's resonate.
The photo over here that's of
the little brother's homework.
- Oh, yeah.
- Or something like this is.
I think for me,
I was struck in general of
the many connections to family
and that those connections aren't ones
the students are trying to sever,
which I think is often
the narrative that's
told of higher education,
that you're trying to get away,
this is the time to get
away from your family,
but that there's this strong
sense of connection back.
And I think in this photo,
the questions it raised for me too is,
what do those connections
mean for these students?
And what does that mean for our university
if we think about students
as connecting back to their families
instead of liberating
themselves from their families?
Which I think is often
the common narrative.
- [Rashne] Yeah, I'm really
glad you brought that up
because across all the five themes,
family in some way, shape,
or form is a subtheme.
And while in some cases
there are challenges with negotiating,
as any student would,
sort of drawing a sense of independence
and self-authorship away from family,
there was, in many,
many overwhelming cases,
a deep sense of rootedness
and an awareness of parental sacrifice
that shaped their actual
ability to cross that bridge
and come to the university.
And nationwide,
particularly since this
is First-Generation Day,
there are several institutions
that have made quite a few strides
with engaging family in college
in ways that are different than
I think a Parents' Weekend,
because of when parents can attend,
when they can't attend, what times,
what kind of space would welcome them.
In fact, there's a student group here,
a student-run group that held
a family night gala last semester
where they invited their own families
and they ran the whole event
as a way to honor what families had done
but also to allow them
to come into a space
where they did not necessarily feel
comfortable, welcome. and so on.
So I think there's a lot of work
for us to do, institutionally, in that way
and I think it could go a long
way in retaining students.
Is there one more comment, yeah?
- [Virajita] Yeah, just to build on that,
actually, at our table also,
this question about how do
we welcome families came up.
But it made me think about,
one image that struck me
was of the mother and daughter there.
It's so powerful because it
not only asserts sort of,
maybe it reflects on the
struggles of the past
and feeling like the mother
was always busy and wasn't there,
but then recognizing of the
student's independence now
and her identity
and wanting to connect but
also keep her own identity.
There's something quite powerful there.
- [Rashne] Thank you.
And I think that's one of the most
complex parts of this data.
And I think we want it
to be clean and simple,
like, family support them,
family doesn't support them.
When it's actually much
more nuanced than that,
and it's, yes, family supports them,
but in what ways?
And then how does that support
actually render itself in
the institutional context?
And in what ways is that support,
doesn't translate as well
into the institutional context
but is still valued by the individual?
So some of that will come out
when Kelly talks about the findings.
So we are gonna switch back
to the presentation format,
if we could right now.
And when we do that,
Kelly will actually talk
a little bit more about,
we don't have time to
talk about every theme,
so I think we're gonna
to try to focus on three:
diversity, multiple
identities, and social class.
Vocational identity was also
another really important one
and there's an article
that is already published
on that in the citations,
if you'd like to look at that one.
- While we're getting set up,
I would like to just say how honored I am
to be here working with Dr.
Jehangir with this data.
My name is Kelly Collins,
as Dr. Jehangir mentioned.
I am a doctoral student
and a first-generation doc
student here at the U in OLPD.
And I do have a connection to TRIO.
I'm an alum of the program
and I also worked TRIO for five years
at another Big Ten institution,
not Penn State!
But it's really good to,
it's actually just an incredible honor
to be part of this project.
So I'm excited to share a
little bit about our data.
Let me just kind of page through.
(woman speaks faintly)
Oh, that's okay.
We wanted to make sure
we had the photos as
folks were reflecting.
So I will just get to our findings.
Oh, here we go, great.
So as Dr. Jehangir mentioned,
there were five major themes
and then several subthemes
within those themes.
And the code books, the process by which
we went through coding the photos
and the narratives was extensive
and so we were able to really identify
some very salient themes in the data.
And I'll begin with
the theme of diversity.
And what I love about,
as I'm sure you
experienced in the gallery,
the ways that the photos
and the narratives
really destabilize and complexify
diversity discourses on
our campus and at large.
So within the diversity theme,
we found these four major subthemes,
I guess is what we would say.
And I just did a sampling here
of some of the diversity-coded photos.
So we have this subtheme of harmony.
And students were really thinking about
and trying to represent what they see.
When we think about diversity,
and it's almost this monolithic idea,
it's actually lost a lot
of meaning for many of us,
but students are representing things
that feel familiar to us,
like those pictures of
the hands, as you see.
There's actually several within the data
of students wanting to show what they see
and the communities that they've built.
They're also, under the harmony subtheme,
they're thinking about diversity
as compelling and as an asset.
So that was where it kinda begins.
Then we get into this idea of access.
But what I find fascinating
is diversity as access
within the institution.
So not like, once we get
here, we have access,
but actually navigating access
as they move through this place.
So we saw a lot of pictures of bridges,
we saw pictures of bus cards.
These are things that
represent for students
that they have access
here once they're here.
So I think that's a
really important component
of the ways that students
are thinking about
diversity on our campus.
And then belonging and
culturally validating spaces.
No surprise that many students
when they were prompted
to think about diversity
decided to represent communities,
enclave spaces that are important to them.
So we saw pictures of
student organizations,
residential learning communities
that were culturally based.
Those showed up in our data consistently.
And lastly, under the diversity subtheme,
is critical multiculturalism.
So it was really fascinating
to see this journey
from harmony, diversity as harmony,
to more of a critique,
more of a loving critique.
So students are talking about diversity,
as I heard folks reflect,
claimed as a value,
espoused as a value, right?
But it's not necessarily
always visible or felt,
and that access does not
necessarily equal belonging.
We hear that a lot
as students were thinking about diversity.
Okay, moving on.
The second theme that we're excited
to share about is multiple identities.
And students talked about this,
and as you look at the
photos, as a process,
and I think that this is really
compelling to think about.
Students are negotiating
their multiple identities
and experiencing shifts
in their identity saliency
as they move throughout our campus,
within the classroom, in
their living community,
and they talked a lot
about navigating that.
What comes forward in
what different spaces,
depending on their development,
depending on their experiences,
both positive, negative, and in between?
Students talked a lot about
the centrality of race
in their multiple identities,
almost always being very salient
and very prominent in
their experience on campus.
So they're naming it,
they're naming their race,
and they're also naming the
broader kind of classifications,
but they're also claiming
their race in many spaces.
Not a surprise when this came up
as we thought about this role of families,
students were talking a lot
about their relational identities
and as that being something
that they're constantly thinking about
as they shift through
multiple identity saliency.
So thinking about their
roles in their family,
as I'm sure you read
repeatedly in the data,
their identity as a parent,
as a sister, as a daughter.
And they also talked a lot about,
we found that this data was very gendered,
actually, interestingly,
and we'd love to talk more
about that in another space.
But this idea that for many of
our students who were women,
their relational identity
was really prominent in the data.
And then the last piece,
and I think very connected
to the centrality of race piece,
is this idea of navigating
their identities
and having a sense of rootedness.
So this is where they're claiming pride,
and especially in the data
around nationality/ethnicity,
immigrant and refugee community,
and religion and culture.
- [Rashne] Can I just jump in there
- Please.
- real quick?
One thing that was really interesting
to look at in the centrality of race
is the extent to which the naming
involved the way in which they felt
they had been named by context here.
So people said,
I feel like I have been
perceived as a lazy immigrant.
They started listing all of
the negative ways in which
one articulates racialized expressions,
on campus and in other places.
And the claiming was a response to that,
it was like an answer
and a challenge to that.
And I found that so sophisticated
in their understanding
of not only themselves
but the spaces that they were negotiating.
And I just wanna say that
because I think often we
don't give students credit
for just how nuanced and sophisticated
they are in their thinking,
and they blow your mind when you ask them
and they have a space to answer.
So I just, that was--
- Thank you.
- [Rashne] And we never,
we did not explicitly ask about race.
We asked them to just talk
about their multiple identities
and students chose to talk about that,
which is also, I think,
an important component.
- Absolutely, thank you.
And then the next theme
that we will explain
is social class,
and I'm sure you read a lot about this
as you were in the gallery.
Students talked about social class
with the framing of this idea
of the broken American dream.
And especially interesting to think about
how college and higher education access
is very often purported and espoused
to be a really critical
opportunity structure,
especially for increasing social mobility
and class mobility.
But many students in their
photos and in their narratives
talked about this new awareness
or this emerging awareness
around the limitations
to the American dream
that they were experiencing
and becoming very aware of.
Being very aware of invisible
and visible barriers
to this idea of the American dream
as they navigated their
experience on campus.
They also talked a lot,
and I definitely read
it, even today again,
this idea of honoring the family sacrifice
for them being here
and how connected that is to
their sense of social class.
An immense amount of pressure to give back
to their communities and their families,
to represent them here,
and feeling that very strong bifurcation
of family identity and
individual identity.
And then the last piece
that I think is connected to all of this
is the experience and the
goal of lifting generations
related to social class.
So many of our students talked
about that moving social,
socioeconomic class is
not something available
to their families and their communities
and their parents, in particular,
but that for them, the second generation,
that this is now their opportunity,
that it is possible,
and it feels possible,
for them to lift generational
socioeconomic status
based on their higher
education experience, access,
ability to continue,
and that sort of thing.
So these were the three subthemes
within the class finding.
- [Rashne] I just wanna follow up
by talking about the
way in which this theme
connected a lot with vocational identity.
And that has salience to those of you
who work with students
in majors and careers,
because of the way we talk about work,
what constitutes work in the academy
and what constitutes work elsewhere.
So when we look back at the
themes of honoring family
or honoring family sacrifice,
many times students were talking
about what we conceive of
as the work of the hands
versus the work of the head.
And if you want to,
there's a great article
here by Kenneth Oldfield
where he describes talking
about what does hard work mean,
and he said, "You wanna see hard work?
"You should come watch my grandparents
"who've had a little greasy
spoon diner for 20 years,
"waking up at 4:00 a.m.
"and then going to bed
"and then starting all over again."
And how is that hard work
compared to the work that
we value in the academy?
And many students tapped
into the kinds of work
their parents had
historically done and still do
and how that work was
invisible labor in a sense
and constrained the ability
to move to the American dream.
So it was this really
interesting connection
between social class
and vocational identity,
which I know we don't have time to get to
but we'll just show you the slide.
Do you wanna talk briefly
about implications?
Or should we maybe do the activity first?
- Oh, sure, we can move into the activity.
The last thing I would just say,
this is a very limited
snapshot of our data findings
and that we are really excited
because we have a really good
publishing agenda around this data.
So look out for more articles about this.
This is just a snapshot.
So yeah, we can move into the activity.
- [Rashne] So one of the
things we wanted to do
and had we had more time
we would spend more time on this,
but one of the things that's
really important to me
is thinking about, how
does research impact
the work that we do a day-to-day basis?
Otherwise it's just a chapter
in a book that six people read,
and I don't really care
that much about that.
So it would be really useful to me
if you'd use the flashcards
to think about the closing reflection
and jot some things down
and maybe we'll have time
to talk briefly about what you have
and then we'll just close
with some of the implications
for practice that we have.
So if you could just jot
down on the flashcard
responses to questions one, two, three,
or any one of them that you
feel you're able to respond to,
that would be very useful for us
as we think about forwarding this work.
So I wondered if somebody,
a couple of people might
be willing to share
what implications they might see for this
or what they find themselves reflecting on
in terms of application of this data
in contexts beyond this room?
We welcome the ideas or thoughts.
And I think sometimes when we share
the ideas and thoughts
from our own context,
other people say, oh, I
could do something like that,
or, I could see implications that way.
So I really do welcome your suggestions
and thoughts around that, thank you.
- [Mahva] All right, well,
the first thing I'd do--
- [Woman] I'll get you a microphone.
- [Rashne] Yeah.
- [Mahva] Thank you.
The first thing I'd do is remind people
that the university system
in the United States
was constructed to build
and maintain white supremacy
first and foremost.
Second of all, I make it clear
that I'm tired of talking about it
and so I ask pretty much every day,
what are we doing about it?
And so I'm the CDes Diversity Chair
and so we have very
uncomfortable conversations.
We had a really good film
series about race last year
and we're working on something to do
this academic year as well
and I've made it very clear
that comfort is not in the program
at any level, at any stage.
So we have to consider
all of these systems
have been in place for
a few centuries now,
what are we doing to dismantle them,
disrupt them, and destroy them?
- [Rashne] Thank you.
Any other comments, broad or specific
to your programmatic initiatives
that you may think about applying
or thinking towards
based on what you've seen here today?
Maybe we need more time to think,
is what I'm hearing in
your unsaid comments,
that's what I'm hearing
in your unsaid comments.
Great, thank you.
I think there's a comment
right there, right?
- [Woman] Oh, I'm sorry.
- [Audience Member] One of
the things I think about
is this confusion between
what a good student is
and what a student that knows
how to navigate academia is.
And I've often kind of
seen this idea where,
you know, we shouldn't
have to teach students
study skills at the university level.
They should just inherently have these
coming into the university.
And to me, that is an implication of,
that is handed-down knowledge
of how to work in a school setting
and while students may
be getting into college
and have found other ways to succeed
to get into college,
I think university life is
very different from that.
And so I think we have to look past
this idea of what a good student is
and stop chalking it up to laziness
or not trying hard enough
and integrate that into our curriculums
instead of feeling like
we're handing students
the answers. (chuckles)
- [Rashne] And I think part
of what I'm hearing you talk about
is this idea of social
and cultural capital
and while there is an existing
social and cultural capital
that students need to navigate this place,
students who don't have this
social and cultural capital
have other social and cultural capital
that isn't often recognized in this space.
So I just wanted to,
I meant to talk about this earlier
but I didn't get a chance to,
but thinking about the way in which
the students that we talked about,
by nature of their intersectionality,
to what extent do they bring
a certain community cultural wealth
that other students actually don't have?
So I think about it in a
great degree of specificity
and I share this with
my first-year students.
So if you have translated
a form for your grandma,
if you've filled out your
taxes for your uncle or aunt
while you've also picked up your cousin
and finished your homework for pre-cal,
you have some mad skills.
And those mad skills
are part of your cultural wealth, right?
They are forms of navigational capital,
they're forms of linguistic capital,
they're forms of resistance capital.
But we often don't articulate
that to students, right?
You don't know about this place,
not what is it that you've learned
in other organizational contexts
that you've navigated with great skill
and how might you transfer
that into this space?
Because if you've done it
so well in those big spaces,
you can do it here.
But you need to be given
those scaffolded steps towards doing it
and you need to be recognized
that that is a vital skillset.
So that to me are,
those are concrete ways I
think we can engage in this
and I'm sorry that this
is in presentation mode
so I look really shoddy going
back and forth like this,
but I do wanna come back to the comment
that was made earlier
about dismantling systems.
And so part of it
is I think being very
contextual about our practice,
I think about it even in the simplest way,
when you ask students when they
come back from spring break,
how was spring break, was it great?
Did you go somewhere?
"No, I worked triple
hours to earn more money
"so that I could pay
for the next semester.
"I didn't go anywhere."
So even the nature and the
types of questions we ask
can be rooted more in the lived
experience of our students.
The other is to what extent might,
if you have capacity for
leadership, as you do,
how does that intentional
supervision shape systemic things,
from a small scale to a large scale?
I think the other part is recognizing,
I think Kelly already talked about this,
destabilizing diversity discourses
that go beyond demography,
because students don't see themselves
in those limited categories,
to this notion of identity
salience and fluidity.
Because some students have
articulated in this data
they don't see themselves
as belonging in one place.
They see themselves in many places,
or they're looking for places
that acknowledge their multiplicity.
UCLA, for example, created a program
that focused on first-gen alum
and they got a response that
they hadn't got in 30 years
relative to the groups,
racial categorized groups,
that they previously had
done alumni work around.
So that suggested a shifting
in how students saw themselves
relative to their connection
to their institution.
So these are some ways in which
I think we can translate this work.
And finally, I think,
and this has been said,
to create and sustain access,
we need to move policy
and, obviously, practice
and its architects
to define the common good
beyond the good of those with whom
they are most familiar
and most comfortable.
And that's the long road
but it's an important journey.
(audience member speaks faintly)
Absolutely, I'm just conscious of the time
and I hate to cramp
other people's, you know.
So please, I welcome questions or comments
or even feedback for how you think
we might use this data in
other spaces and places
that would move this conversation forward.
- [Virajita] I have one question.
You talked about the capital,
the multiple kinds of
capital that are available,
and earlier you pointed us to lacks.
- Mm-hmm, exactly.
- Lack of this,
that, and other.
And I'm trying to figure out,
it's not so much the students that need it
but the rest of us in the system,
to recognize that what we see as lack
is really a limited or deficit mindset.
And how do you actually,
as you do your work,
entertain the thought
of complete possibility
and capacity in the students,
even as the historical barriers
that they've faced are equally true?
So I don't know if you
have any insights on that
but I think it's mostly for those of us
who are working in the system
and how we change our mindsets
in a consistent and progressive way.
- [Rashne] I think about it
in sort of the small levels
and where we engage with students
and then I think about it
at the strategic levels
that are above that.
Some of the smallest levels, I think,
is in what ways do we give
permission to students
to talk about their multiplicity,
in our classrooms,
through our assignments,
in our pedagogy?
In what ways do we invite the possibility
of that being something that
somebody would want to share?
And how do we model framing it such
that people can see that those things
are actually skillsets that they have?
Because if they're coming in
and the whole system has
told them historically
that they aren't skillsets that they have,
then why would you feel
compelled to say that
or even open your mouth about it?
So I think that's at the
most basic but critical,
because students spend the most
amount of time in classrooms
and so that's sort of a faculty role.
The other piece I think about
is I think strategically around economics
and I think about windows of opportunity.
So right now, I think there's an argument
that the institutions are making
that they want diversity,
they want diversity in their faculty,
they want diversity in their
student body, et cetera,
and yet they've got,
it's two trains running.
You've got the narrative about that
and then you've got a
narrative about SAT scores
and all these other things.
These things are in collision
courses with each other.
And to call attention to
the fact that those things
are in collision courses with each other,
and to think about if,
I feel like there's a window
of opportunity right now
around graduate students
who are first-gen.
Because this issue is
at a tipping point now,
people are paying attention to it
in the last three years
in ways that they haven't for the last 20
and I think we seize that
window of opportunity
by having those conversations
in different forms with
different people about it
in ways that it becomes
commonplace at our institution
to talk about it.
This is First-Gen Week.
For the first time on Tuesday,
the Graduate School hosted an event
for first-generation college students.
That was a step forward
and it was an opportunity
to say, well, now what?
What happens after that?
What kind of spaces do we create?
So I think there are multiple
ways to respond to the problem
and people can do it from the
places that we're sitting at.
The last thing I'll say,
because I know our time is up,
is in 2020, November 6th,
we'll be hosting the second
First-Generation Conference.
This time with colleagues
from Crookston and Rochester
and other places who actually have
much larger populations
of first-gen students.
Two years ago we gave out micro-grants
to people who had innovative
ideas of this nature,
where they wanted to amend
something in their own space.
And 10 people were recipients
and we'll be inviting them back
to talk about what it was like
to create some kind of systemic change.
And so I'm hoping that this
stays fresh in your mind
and you may engage with us again,
not only now, not only in
the next couple months,
but as a meeting point again
in Fall of 2020 as well.
So thank you very much
for having us, Virajita,
(audience applauds)
and Kelly, for being
such a wonderful partner.
I appreciate, and the students.
Aren't their voices so amazing?
I always feel so moved by them.
