by Mary Beth Leone-Getton

The positive effects of a college diploma are many—from increased income and professional mobility to good health. Yet for students whose parents’ highest level of education is high school or less, finishing college is a greater challenge than for those whose parents hold a degree. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s “First-Generation Students in Postsecondary Education” study, only 24 percent of first-generation college students attain an undergraduate degree, compared to 68 percent of students with at least one parent who attended college.

Research has shown that regardless of their parents’ background, students who participate in a learning community—a small cohort of students that takes a set of integrated courses together—are more engaged in their learning and have higher retention rates. Learning communities with a multicultural makeup and curriculum have been particularly successful in this regard. But the specific reasons that first-generation students stay at a postsecondary institution have been less known.

To uncover these motivators, Rashné Jehangir, assistant professor in the Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning, analyzed weekly writing assignments from a multicultural learning community comprising students from the Trio Support Services Program. Trio, a federally funded program housed in the College, offers academic development services for low- to moderate-income, first-generation college students and for students with disabilities.

Jehangir and her postsecondary teaching and learning colleagues Pat James and Patrick Bruch created an interdisciplinary curriculum that addressed the challenges faced by first-generation students. Instructors encouraged students to examine texts, art, and narrative in context of the students’ lived experiences. The students wrote reflective passages focusing on three areas: identity, community, and agency, to help reveal their learning processes and their experiences in higher education. Jehangir analyzed the entries to identify recurring themes and found five key topics that explain how the learning community helped students find their identity within the college experience:

Finding place: A sense of ownership and belonging about the academic experience and, frequently, about the institution as a whole.

Finding voice: An awareness of their social and academic identities and the feeling that what they had to offer—writing, art, or discussion—has merit and adds value to the academic enterprise.

Transformational learning: A feeling that change is possible and they are agents of change in the world.

Bridge building: A sense of connectedness between their home community and their school life, and between themselves, peers, and instructors

Conflict as catalyst: A safe environment that helps students engage in meaningful dialogue with people who are different from them. Students were asked to think across disciplines and from different perspectives and to negotiate differences with their peers and instructors.

“While it isn’t easy or even pleasant, conflict appears to have a central role of moving students closer to understanding themselves, others, and issues of social change, which can give them a stronger sense of academic identity,” Jehangir explains.

Jehangir also conducted a companion, longitudinal interview study, which she began with the fall 2001 cohort, that tracks participants’ progress through college. She found that an average of 84 percent of learning community students were retained after the first year—a critical measuring stick, because many low income, first-generation students drop out at that time—a rate on par with the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, as a whole. After two years, 60 percent of the multicultural learning community students were still enrolled; 52 percent persisted at the three-year mark.

“The multicultural learning community model that Dr. Jehangir explores provides a proven avenue for [new students in academia] to find their way and their place in the university,” comments Jennifer Engle, research analyst at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education in Washington, D.C.

Jehangir’s research provides a rare look inside the minds of first-generation college students and a working model of how to meet their needs, both cognitively and affectively. Barbara Read, vice president for student affairs at Inver Hills Community College in Minnesota, comments, “Dr. Jehangir offers new considerations that colleges can use to create learning environments that address the specific needs of their students while maximizing scarce resources.”

Jehangir is continuing to interview past learning community cohorts and will collect a final writing submission this fall from participants in last year’s community. She also hopes to form a mentoring group for past participants to support each other through their continuing education.

“When marginalized students are empowered to give voice to their ideas without filtering out their life experiences, they move out of the periphery, take ownership of their place, and see that their voices belong in the academy,” concludes Jehangir.

PHOTO: Pat James