Building and Maintaining First-Gen Communities Amidst Institutional Transition

It’s been 22 days since National First-Generation College Celebration Day, and at Mills College at Northeastern, we had much to celebrate. Prior to the merger with Northeastern University, Mills College had a long legacy of celebrating, cultivating, and caring for our first-gen students. For over 30 years, Mills ran the Summer Academic Workshop (SAW) that invited first-gen students to stay at Mills during the summer before their freshman year and take classes that prepared them for the rigor of higher education courses and culture. With cohorts ranging from 4 to 40 students, the SAW program was the key to getting first-gen students engaged in campus life, their education, and their community; SAW provided students with a space to connect with like-minded freshmen students, as well as build personal relationships with faculty and staff to help support them once the semester started. And it worked! As cited by one of our legacy SAW students, "As a first-gen student, I saw college as so transactional; go to class, go to work, go home. But finding community changed that. The secret is finding people that you can resonate with, go to, and rely on and take advantage of opportunities and programs that you can find community in." (Valeria Araujo, Student Leader, Class of 2023)

Students in the SAW program had high continuous enrollment rates and cite the mentorship and community built in the program as integral to their success at Mills and beyond.

 

Due to the July 1st merger with Northeastern, we’ve had to put a pause on the long-standing program. But this pause didn’t stop how we celebrated and honored first-gen voices at Mills. With support from the Center for Intercultural Engagement on Northeastern’s Boston campus, we were able to build a robust week of events and storytelling that all centered around the power and uniqueness of our first-gen community here at Mills. In a time where folks are adapting to new systems and pivoting to succeed in a new academic landscape, National First-Generation College Celebration Day offered a chance to reflect on the achievements we don’t often highlight. Folks were happy to share their stories and all of them had the same thread of truth in them: community matters. Community is what pushed folks to get engaged with their education, promoted them to imagine what they could achieve, and what kept folks here even through the hard moments.

The first-gen community at Mills College at Northeastern University is one that does not root itself in a deficit mindset, but instead focuses on its power. As noted by our Assistant Vice Chancellor of Student Life, Lilian Gonzalez, "It [being first-gen] is definitely one of the most sacred and salient parts of my identity and one that I wear as a badge of honor." From our most senior positions on campus, folks speak about their first-gen status with a love and openness that truly inspires. The consensus on the campus is that community, whether you’re new or not, is something you pour yourself into, something you don’t shy away from, and something you continue building even after you graduate and move into new spaces. It’s with this mindset that the first-gen community at Mills College at Northeastern, with the legacy of the SAW program and the hope and tenacity of students and staff alike, continues to prevail.

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For more information on Mills College at Northeastern University's approach, please visit their website here.