The Center for Student Success and First Year experience will host a meet and greet today for first generation college students who might be interested in their Students First Program. First generation college students are students whose parents do not have a college degree. Being the first in their family to obtain a college degree is a great accomplishment for first generation students, but it can be a challenge.
John Aaron Howell from Bentonia, says that people from his small town rarely attend college, and especially nota four-year university.
“Being a first generation college student is, I’d say, more challenging than being a second or third generation college student because we don’t have the role models to look up to; if we have questions, we basically have to answer them on our own,” Howell said.
The university, however, especially the Office of Admissions and the Center for Student Success and First Year Experience, has been very helpful in assisting Howell and making sure that being a first generation student did not hinder him.
Dylan Lewis, a sophomore from Mooreville, said being a first generation student motivates him and makes him more determined: “It really gives me the opportunity to push myself more and prove that I can do it.”
Ruben Ruiz, a senior, said being a first generation student has advantages as well as disadvantages: “(Being a first generation student) is neat in the fact that I get to blaze my own trail, experiencing and learning everything for myself but daunting because I didn’t know what to expect or everything that was available to me,” Lewis said.
The Center for Student Success and First Year Experience assists first generation students through their StudentsFIRST (Freshman Interactively Reaching Success Together) program. Crystal Dunn, coordinator of the program and former first generation student, says that the program was created after noticing that a large portion of students at Ole Miss were first generation students and that they did not have many resources available to them for guidance. The main focus of StudentsFIRST is to help freshmen transition into college by informing them of the resources at their fingertips, helping them to get involved, and by providing peer mentoring and other programs to help them have a successful first year. Last year the program attracted a diverse range of students from different backgrounds.
Dunn wants students who are the first of their family members to attend college to be open about their experience.
“Don’t be afraid to ask questions,” Dunn said. “It’s also important for them to know that they are not alone and that there are a lot of first generation students here, and they’re all here for the same goal, which is to earn a college degree.”
The biggest challenge these students face is financial difficulties, and Dunn hopes the program will eventually be able to directly assist with this, but said it will only be possible through gaining more university support for this program. According to the Office of Institutional Research, approximately seventeen percent of last year’s students attending Ole Miss were first generation students.
The meet and greet will be held today from noon -1 p.m. in the third floor conference room in Martindale.
