How programs help first-generation students succeed
WRITTEN BY JEN LYNDS
Aubrey Kennedy was nervous and thrilled when she first stepped into a classroom at the University of Maine at Presque Isle (UMPI). The 33-year-old English major sought other opportunities after high school before enrolling at the university in 2022.
Kennedy will become the first person in her family to earn a bachelor’s degree when she graduates in the spring, and credits her achievement to hard work, dedication, and the support UMPI offers to first-generation students.
Mary Kate Barbosa, UMPI’s director of student support services, said the definition of first-generation students is those whose parent(s) or legal guardian(s) have not completed a bachelor’s degree.
“Our first-generation program works in tandem with the student support services program,” Barbosa said. “Student support services must serve low-income, first-generation students with disabilities, or any combination of those.”
Along with the first-generation program, federally funded TRIO programs serve more than 3,000 students across the state, according to Karen Keim, director of TRIO’s Maine Educational Opportunity Center and Maine Educational Talent Search at the University of Maine in Orono. The TRIO programs equip underprivileged people for admission to, retention in, and completion of higher education. The programs assist students with everything from understanding financial aid and college terminology to navigating academic setbacks and more.
“In some families, college is not expected like it is in other families,” she explained. “So when you have that first student who attends, it can be a real fish out of water experience.”
Kennedy agreed with that, especially coming to UMPI as a non-traditional student. She recalled the questions that ran through her head in the weeks before classes began.
“Would I be wise enough to understand the broad range of subjects I would be taking?” she recalled thinking. “Would I write my papers correctly? Would I feel too old to take part in the campus community?”
Those questions are common, according to Keim.
“Every first-generation student faces the same questions and problems that every other student faces,” she explained. “But the difference is that when first-generation students have questions, they don’t feel like they have any resources.”
Emily Mason, who graduated from the University of Maine School of Nursing four years ago, agreed.
She recalled being “really supported” by the TRIO programs.
“Since my parents had never been to college, they could not help me,” she explained. “I did not know a lot of the terminology. Those sorts of answers were not just a phone call away.”
Back at UMPI, Barbosa added that first-generation students often wrestle with what she calls “I’m the first person who” thoughts.
“As in, ‘I’m the first person who doesn’t understand what these financial aid documents mean, or I am the first person who has never checked out a book from the library,’” she said. “That is something I hear a lot.”
To counter this, Barbosa said that she sets up a panel during UMPI student orientation that includes a broad spectrum of students from different areas, from different majors, and who have had different experiences.
“They talk about what they were worried about when they first came to college,” she said. “I hope this sets our students at ease.”
For more about these programs, visit umaine.edu/edhd/research-outreach/trio-programs or umpi.edu/offices/student-support-services
