FIRST DEGREE
Videos highlight first-generation students and their academic paths
Sept. 23, 2024
Photography: Brian Buss / CSU System.
An environmental engineering student who is legally blind, serves as a CSU Presidential Ambassador, and conducts research in mosquito tracking to better understand infectious disease.
A recent CSU Pueblo graduate who excelled as a nursing student and track-and-field athlete and now competes in national races while striving to become a hospital executive.
A Denver high schooler who got hooked on higher education through CSU Spur, became a horticulture research assistant, and is entering CSU to study landscape architecture.
These are just a few of the standout first-generation students who represent CSU System campuses. They are the first in their immediate families to earn college degrees – or are on track to be the first. They also are the subjects of a new miniseries of documentary videos – called First Degree – produced by the CSU System to highlight the personal and academic journeys of first-generation students.
Robert Lamm, a first-generation student with sight impairment, has learned to juggle and practices on the CSU campus with his service dog, Fletcher, lying nearby.
As a group, this subpopulation of college students notably gains from degree attainment as new doors to opportunity and financial security open for them and, by extension, their families. Their stories are not only compelling but also help demonstrate the value of higher education, said Tony Frank, chancellor of the CSU System.
“Every time we graduate a first-gen student, it shifts the trajectory of an entire family,” Frank recently said. “Somewhere in the family of everyone who holds a college degree, there was a first-generation student – one person who made the difficult choice to break with family tradition and pursue a higher education.
“That choice brings with it all the rich benefits of education itself, as well as the countless ancillary benefits that we know college graduates see in return for their investment, including higher salaries and more career options over a lifetime,” he said.
In 1984, Colorado State University in Fort Collins became the first university in the country to offer scholarships for first-generation students. The model was quickly adopted by universities around the country. This year, that program marked its 40th anniversary.
First-generation students, often from underrepresented and under-resourced communities, reflect the university’s land-grant mission of providing access to higher education for talented and motivated students from all walks of life, Frank noted.
First-generation students featured in a new CSU miniseries include, from left, Ashley Magee, Rebekah Buena (with horticulture researcher Jennifer Bousselot), and Jesse Vido.
First-generation students featured in a new CSU miniseries include, from top, Ashley Magee, Rebekah Buena (with horticulture researcher Jennifer Bousselot), and Jesse Vido.
Last academic year, first-generation students numbered more than 5,500 and made up nearly 25 percent of undergraduates at CSU, the System’s flagship campus in Fort Collins, records show. At CSU Pueblo, first-generation students compose an even greater percentage of the student body – more than 40 percent.
Given the numbers and the stakes for individual students, System leaders have underscored the importance of campus support systems to help first-generation students achieve academic success.
“We as a community have come so far in 40 years, but we still have so far to go,” CSU President Amy Parsons said during an awards dinner for first-generation students. “We started the first program. I think that we can be the best, and that should always be our aspiration at CSU.”
The First Degree video stories will debut in October and may be found at that time at csusystem.edu/first-degree.
Photo at top: Yasmine Hernandez, pictured with Coach Matt Morris at CSU Pueblo, is one of the first-generation students featured in First Degree.
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