The First-Gen CORE+ Project:
Cultivating Opportunities, Resources, and Equity
This asset-based project was designed as an extension of the original First-Gen CORE study to better understand the experiences of first-generation graduate students at UT Austin by partnering them with first-generation faculty members.
Funded by UT Austin’s Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost’s 2022-2023 Actions that promote Community Transformation (ACT) Seed Grant and the College of Education
First-Gen CORE+ Objectives:
Recruit and partner first-gen graduate students and faculty to join our mentoring community.
Discuss perspectives, lessons, and challenges as first-gen graduate students and faculty.
Build collective knowledge and new social capital for first-gen graduate students and faculty across campus.
Create a mutually supportive learning environment between first-gen graduate students and faculty.
The CORE+ Mentoring Community Model
My team recruited eight first-generation individuals (four graduate students + four faculty members) to participate in a series of partnered, discussion-based workshops.
During this time, participants could share their perspectives, questions, and insights about first-gen identity, challenges encountered, and professional goals.
Preliminary Findings
The CORE+ mentoring model created a space for belonging and community for rising and current first-gen academics.
The CORE+ mentoring community established a space for first-gen students and faculty from diverse academic and social backgrounds to come together in a rewarding and relevant dialogue.
Professional development is effective when it is individualized, identity-based, and structured.
The consistency of the CORE+ meetings enabled our student-faculty partners to cultivate rapport and build trust between one another, stemming from their shared first-gen identity.
First-gen students experience negative sentiments related to burnout, imposter syndrome, stress, and uncertainty related to the expectations of graduate school and “what comes next.”
Student-faculty partner conversations highlighted various unseen challenges experienced by first-gen students in higher education. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted the mental and physical health of many working in academic spaces.
