College of St. Scholastica: First Generation Students, Scholars, Teachers, Struggles

First Generation: Students, Scholars, Teachers, Struggles

A Discussion at the College of St.

Scholastica, 2013

Overview

1. My Credibility2. FirstGen Students: The Problem of Tacit Knowledge3. FirstGen Students: Stories of Struggle4. Hypothesis: Carrying a Knife to a Gunfight: Bullying and FirstGen Experiences5. Solutions: Mentor Networks

About Me

I am:--the fourth person in my entire family to graduate middle school--the third to graduate high school--the first to complete a BA--the first to complete an MA and PhD--dislocated from the majority of my family as a result

About Me

When I completed my MA and announced my acceptance into the PhD, my grandfather asked whether it wasn't time to quit this school foolishness and get a job.

About Me

When I come home for holidays, I talk about my comics collection.

About Me

At university events at, for example, Northland Country Club, I am always reminded that every other member of my family could only be here if they were working the catering.

11 years ago, the only way I would have been there would have been as part of catering.

I sometimes wonder if they'll "catch" me and ask me to help bus tables.

About Me

At faculty meetings and faculty parties, I ask myself:

if I had to justify this work to my grandfather -- explain to him that we are spending his tax dollars on research into allusions in medieval poems or close readings of Hobbesian philosophy, would I be ashamed?

About Me

There are a thousand reasons I am awkward and ill-fitting as a faculty member, but surely one of them is that I am a first-generation student who has become a first-generation faculty member.

First-Gens: Complex Motivations

I want to prove to my parents that they didn’t make a mistake having me. My mom had me at a really young age, so she didn’t get the chance to go to college, and I just want) to prove to her that she didn’t make a mistake and all her hard work just didn’t go to waste raising me." --Center for Youth Voice

First-Gens: Complex Motivations

"For me, I’ll be the first in my family. My dad didn’t finish high school, and I feel like I need to be the one to show him that it’s possible. And my grandmother didn’t get to see my dad finish high school, so I want to show my grandmother, too, that we can do it. And show my little brother that if I could do it, he could, like set an example for him." --Voices

First-Gens: Complex Demands

"I’m not good at math, but I’m good at writing. It’s my dream to write and whenever I tell my family that, they’re like, 'Nah, man! You have to get a job with mathematics or engineering.' And I’m like, 'I’m not good at that stuff, I want to write.' And they’re like, 'No. You have to do this.' It’s like they want to impose their dreams on mine, because they messed up." -Voices

First-Gens: Complex Demands

"I can’t go home and ask my mom what she thinks. My older sister didn’t go to college either, so they’re kind of going down the path with me of, 'We don’t really know what to expect.' Like what’s too much money to pay? And when do you say. 'No, it’s not realistic anymore,' and things like that.'" -Voices

First-Gens: Gender Dynamics

"A whistling woman and a crowing hen, Is neither fit for God nor men."

In some communities, literacy, including college education is higher among women... but "Katie May also expressed a worry about being perceived by her mother as 'rising above my raising' — similar to Julie’s designation as 'uppity' by her partner—when she talked about concepts learned in school." --Webb-Sunderhaus; also Sohn

Case Study: My Clueless friend Brett Lunceford

Clueless:Brett Lunceford

When I applied to doctoral programs, I made many mistakes. • Because I planned to complete my

master’s degree in one year, my recommendation letters came from the three doctorate-holding professors I had taken that semester. This must have seemed a strange mix to the admissions committee because only one of these professors taught in the subject area for which I applied.


When I applied to doctoral programs, I made many mistakes. • In hindsight, my writing sample

was awful and a poor choice. In my rhetoric program applications, I submitted a research proposal for an ethnographic study.

• I wrote one statement of purpose with little thought of adapting it to different programs.


When I applied to doctoral programs, I made many mistakes. • I had not presented research at

academic conferences, nor did I know the professional organizations to which I should have belonged.

• I sent a résumé because I did not know what a curriculum vitae was.


When I applied to doctoral programs, I made many mistakes. • I obtained most information

about graduate programs by nding them on the Internet and fiknew nothing of their reputations. Unaware that Iowa was one of my eld’s top fiprograms, I applied to Iowa thinking that the program was probably not that desirable because of its location.

The Message:Brett Lunceford

When students are left to their own devices, they sometimes behave in ways that seem puzzling to those who know better—despite the internal logic of such behaviors.

FirstGens Don't Struggle for Lack of Ability.

FirstGens Struggle because They Cannot See

Tacit Expectations

Polanyi's Tacit Knowledge

People are not aware of the knowledge they possess or how it can be valuable to others. Transfer of tacit knowledge generally requires:• extensive personal contact, • regular interaction and • trust.This kind of knowledge can only be revealed through practice in a particular context and transmitted through social networks.

FirstGens and Tacit Knowledge

First generation students do not know that they-do-not-know the many tacit dimensions of knowledge in the university.

Faculty often do not know that they-tacitly-know many dimensions of life in the university that first-generation students need to know to survive and thrive.

More Stories of FirstGen Struggle

"I've found that I struggle more to attain a sense of belonging in a culture of colleagues who, at least, come from a solid middle-to-upper class background. Rather than trying to be liked, I find myself being defensive and resentful of their sense of privilege and, honestly, entitlement..." --J. Robin


"The biggest hurdle I've had with my family is a lack of understanding about my world. I understand theirs because I grew up in it, but they rarely understand mine. It can feel quite lonely. Thankfully, I have a husband who is also a first-gen college student with a PhD, and we can wade these misunderstood waters together." --bitzib


"I learned early on that being brainy put one in the "whattaya think yer better than us???" category, which, in a small town, was not the way to function. You need to rely on each other, to help dig each other out of the snowbank, to help find each other's lost dogs, to help get each other out of trouble generally.... and being or acting "better" was never the way to go. You can replace "better" with the other insult often thrown at folks who appeared too worldy, "fancy" (as in "gettin' too fancy dere, eh?)." --Kristin Arola


"I grew up in a family where I knew it was important to go to college because my mom taught me that I didn't want to be on food stamps when I had my own children. She wanted me to go to college, so that was a plus. However, I went "too far" when I went on to get my PhD. My family has little do with me, and my mom now tells me that I am a part of the liberal university system that is corrupting the youth of America. I am isolated in my personal life." --Crystal Sands


"I was floored by relatives on my dad's side of the family asking "when are you girls going to get done with school?" Uh, we WORK at schools." --Donna


"During graduate school, I continued to follow a model of pleasing the faculty, as I had sought to please my parents. I was more passive than I should have been about mapping out a field of study, and I was more focused on gaining praise for good teaching than I should have been (although I continue to believe in the value of good teaching). This led me to put more energy into teaching rather than early professionalization as a scholar." --"MLA Member"


"One of the things that I have learned about myself is that I have had to teach myself how to learn. Neither of my parents have more than two years of college. Neither me nor my siblings were held to account for homework or other aspects of success in school. I was in my junior year of my Bachelor's before I realized that I really didn't know how to learn. I was is grad school before I knew basic things such as the importance of study groups, finding tutors, or how to get the most out of a text book." --"Edwards"

Consequences:Bullying in

the University

Bullying in the

University

Times Higher Education commissioned a survey in 2005 and received 843 responses.

Over 40% reported they had been bullied, with 33% reporting "unwanted physical contact" and 10% reporting physical violence; about 75% reported they were aware that co-workers had been bullied.

Bullying in the

University

"Conditions that increase vulnerability to [bullying] in academe:• Foreign birth and upbringing,

especially as signaled by a foreign accent

• Being different from colleagues (by sex, sexual orientation, skin color, ethnicity, class origin, or credentials)

• Belonging to a discipline with ambiguous standards and objectives

Bullying in the

University

"Conditions that increase vulnerability to [bullying] in academe:• Working under a dean or other

administrator in whom, as Nietzsche put it, “the impulse to punish is powerful”

• • An actual or contrived financial crunch in one’s academic unit (when the watering hole gets smaller, the animals get meaner)

Bullying in the

University

Stallworth and Adams describe bullying in academe:"regulation bullying," where the victim is forced to comply with unnecessary rules; "legal bullying," which involves using legal action to control or punish a person; "pressure bullying," which involves making unreasonable time demands; and "corporate bullying," in which an employer abuses a worker who cannot easily find another job. --CHE

Meeting the Needs of FirstGen Students will also Diminish the Culture of Bullying

Next Steps to Serve FirstGen

Students

Remember:Transfer of tacit knowledge generally requires:• extensive personal contact, • regular interaction and • trust.This kind of knowledge can only be revealed through practice in a particular context and transmitted through social networks.

How do we create these conditions?

Next Steps to Serve FirstGen

Students

1.Healthy McNair Programs are a start.

2.Healthy Undergraduate Research Programs are a start.

...but some, at least, emphasize single mentor-mentee relationships for• extensive personal contact, • regular interaction and • trust.

This is a model built on two flaws:1.It encourages exhaustion of the

mentor.2.It depends too much on a single

person to make explicit what is tacit.

Mentor Networks!

Transfer of tacit knowledge generally requires practice in a particular context and transmitted through social networks.

Sending a student to NCUR does not do this work!

How do we create a space for firstgen students (and firstgen faculty) within professional social networks -- a network of mentors?

Review

1. My Credibility2. FirstGen Students: The Problem of Tacit Knowledge3. FirstGen Students: Stories of Struggle4. Hypothesis: Carrying a Knife to a Gunfight: Bullying and FirstGen Experiences5. Solutions: Mentor Networks

Giving Lunceford the

Last Word

Graduate school is like the beginning of the television show “Kung Fu,” in which a monk has to move an iron cauldron lled with fiburning coals from one re to the fiother with his bare arms pressed against strategically placed dragons. After completing this task, he thrusts his arms into the snow to stop the burning. Graduate school is similar: “It will be painful, you’ll be scarred for life, and you’ll never again be the same—but you’ll have some bitchin’ dragons on your arms to show for it.” --Lunceford

College of St. Scholastica: First Generation Students, Scholars, Teachers, Struggles

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