Harnessing the Strength of First-Generation Families

What if everything you thought you knew about supporting first-generation college students was wrong?

As the conventional wisdom goes, parents who never earned a degree present singular challenges and barriers to their children's chances of completing a degree. Their kids have less grounding in how to handle the pressures of higher education, it’s often thought, so they’re less likely to stick it out.

Wendy Ochoa, assistant professor in San Diego State University’s Department of Child and Family Development (CFD), rejects that deficit framing outright.

“If you're not asking minoritized students who supports them and what cultural values and knowledge protects and fosters their academic and emotional well-being, you're likely not getting the full story,” said Ochoa, who is entering her second year on the CFD faculty. “For most, it's our families that keep us resilient in environments that aren’t always welcoming of us. More importantly, cultural values and bodies of knowledge can give us the tools to be leading and innovative professionals in our fields.

“Researchers of color have been saying this for many years, but the field hasn’t been listening. It keeps asking the same questions and perpetuating a deficit narrative about being from a different cultural background.”

Ochoa has teamed with Rosie Villafana-Hatcher, director of the Early Assessment Program in SDSU’s Office of Educational Opportunity Programs, Outreach and Success, on a new cross-campus initiative to turn that academic orthodoxy on its head. Their idea is to bring parents into the fold early and help students tap into the strengths of immigrant family structures and culture along their journeys to college.

Grit and resilience

Supported by a family engagement grant from the California State University Office of the Chancellor, their “It Takes a Village” project will collaborate with local school districts and community partners to facilitate workshops for parents of middle schoolers and high schoolers who are potential first-generation students.

“Middle school is key,”  said Villafana-Hatcher, who has been engaging with first-generation students for 17 years in her role at SDSU. “It’s a point where we can still plant seeds, and they still have time to plan and prepare themselves to take advantage of programs and resources available at high schools.”

The program will launch later this summer with families in the Sweetwater Union High School District, which serves San Diego’s South Bay — a community with large numbers of Latinx and immigrant students. Villafana-Hatcher said they expect to engage about 100 parents in the program’s first year.

Workshops will focus on college options, admission requirements, financial aid and support programs and other resources families can tap. It will all culminate with an end-of-year reception where parents will be celebrated with certificates of completion.

“We want to use the cultures of communities as an asset and not just replicate what works for white, middle-class families,” Ochoa said. “There are many workshops out there where they teach you the ways of academia, and it’s implied that your culture and the way that you were raised is not conducive to success — even if it's not explicitly stated. Beyond not being true, I think it is harmful.

“Graduating and accomplishing goals, despite the institutional barriers, is resilience,” she added. “And if there's one thing that we know a lot of immigrants are, it’s resilient. That grit and hard-work ethic that's instilled in us when we are in the crib is crucial and often underappreciated in U.S. school systems.”

A natural collaboration

The academic and the student affairs administrator form a natural tandem. Ochoa’s research expertise in fostering the wellbeing of diverse young children by centering the knowledge of their parents, dovetails with Villafana-Hatcher’s experience working with local systems, students and families. And both were first-generation college students themselves, growing up in immigrant families in Southern California.

The two met last fall at the grand opening of SDSU’s Undocumented Resource Center and bonded instantly. Plans for a collaboration soon followed.

“This is something that I'm really passionate about,” Villafana-Hatcher said. “We are doing great work at this university, but sometimes it’s happening in silos. Student affairs and academic affairs can sometimes mirror our efforts, but it's nice when we can bridge it and create synergy.

“We're all working collaboratively for the same purpose: To make sure students come in and they graduate.”