Vega / Journal for Multicultural Education / January 2022
The purpose of this paper is to understand how the author – and many other students – became first-generation college students (FGCSs) by exploring the rise and retraction of TRIO. Originally, TRIO was a set of three college access and retention programs created in the 1960s to address the needs of a population designated as academically and economically disadvantaged. The author uses the term “becoming” as a process of how a person is constructed socially, in this case, as a FGCS and faculty member. The author uses social construction of targeted populations theory to explore their testimonio as a beneficiary of opportunity programs.
