Postcards from the Rogue Valley

College? Where I come from that’s another planet,” said Chyna Rodriquez, a rising senior at Southern Oregon University here in Ashland. “There wasn’t a person in my world who’d gone to college. Jail, yes. College, no. The first time I heard the word ‘college’ was in elementary school. I raised my hand and asked the teacher ‘What’s that?’”

We hear so much these days about crippling student debt. For young people like Chyna, one of twelve siblings raised by a single mom tangled in her own demons, making it to college in the first place can feel like a journey of a thousand years. 

This spring, I organized a series of panels featuring Southern Oregon University (SOU) students for a class I taught at the university’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), a national program that offers noncredit courses for adults over age 50.  The course description began: 

While OLLI is part of SOU, many of us know little about the students for whom the university is a four-year home. Our paths rarely cross. We can guess how they see the world or which issues win their attention or how they imagine their future. But these are only guesses. This course aims to fill in some of the answers, giving the stage to student voices we rarely hear.”

For the introductory panel, I gathered students who were the first in their family to go to college, and this is how I met Chyna. 

Ten years ago, my nonprofit WKCD spearheaded a national campaign championing students for whom college was a big reach. We co-authored with first-generation students peer-to-peer advice books for those following in their footsteps. Our co-authors, still in the midst of their college journey, talked about the steep hurdles they faced, from lack of knowledge about college and discomfort with leaving their family behind to finances and fitting in.

The students on this SOU panel, save Chyna, were recent graduates, now making “lives of purpose,” as one put it. Still COVID wary, the panel unfolded over Zoom.

First-Generation Students at a Glance

Who are “first-generation” students?  They are students from families where neither parent completed a four-year college degree. They currently make up about 30 percent of college freshmen.

First-generation students are more likely to enroll at the local community college — living at home to make ends meet — than students with college-educated parents (50% vs 25%).

Balancing jobs and sometimes young children of their own, they are more likely to attend college part-time rather than full-time when compared to higher income peers (48% vs 38%). “I wished I could make college the center of my life,” one community college student told me, “but I struggle to fit it in at all.”

The balancing act is draining. Nationally, close to 90 percent of low-income first-generation students leave college within six years without a degree. More than a quarter leave after their first year — four times the dropout rate of their better-resourced peers. Higher education advocates used to focus on college access for low-income students. Today, the conversation has shifted to retention.

One-third of first-generation students are 30 years of age or older.

Alec: Environmental Action

Alec Bayarsky was first up on our SOU panel. “It’s been a long journey for me,” he began.

For three years, I took classes part-time at Riverside Community College in Southern California and worked full-time at a string of jobs, not sure where I was going or why. Then I signed up for a course in ecology, not quite sure what it was, and got introduced to the world of environmental science and our impact on the planet. Overnight, college went from filling a pail to lighting a fire” [summoning the famous Yeats quote].”

Alec signed up for as many science courses as he could and started tutoring classmates before chemistry class, discovering that he enjoyed teaching as much as learning. For years he had visited family in Southern Oregon, and he set his sights on transferring to the well-regarded environmental science program at SOU. 

“We’re acrobats,” a first-generation student told me years ago, and like his peers, Alec grabbed a ring at the nearby Rogue Community College, picking up a few more science credits, establishing Oregon residency, and saving on tuition. He also tutored students in biology and chemistry (“my thing,” he said) and crowned the year as the Rogue Community College commencement speaker (“what seems like a lifetime ago”).

At SOU, Alec joined campus committees supporting environmental action—SOU has won national awards for its leadership in sustainable practices—and joined the McNair Baccalaureate Scholars program, winning a full scholarship and putting him on track for graduate school. (One of Alec’s secrets to securing financial aid in the past was being a triplet.) His senior year, he was invited to participate as a GIS technician on a multi-national research project.

COVID placed Alec’s graduate school plans on hold, however. 

Faced with this fuzzy weird world of lockdowns and postponements, I decided to take a deep breath. I was eight years into this journey. It’s easy when you are going through college to feel like you’re jumping the hoops and forget what inspired you in the first place. I needed to re-group.”

Alec joined a local nonprofit startup, Firebrand Resiliency Collective, where he uses his computer-based mapping skills to target resources and recovery in Talent, one of two nearby towns destroyed by the explosive Almeda Fire in September 2020. 

Asela: Creative Writing

After a multi-year, three-state search for affordable housing and decent jobs, Asela Lee Kemper’s family settled in Klamath Falls, Oregon, across the Siskiyou Mountains east of Ashland. There, she followed her friends to the local community college. “I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I knew I liked reading books, I liked arts and music, but it was an introductory poetry class that set me going,” she said.

Her father, her biggest fan, encouraged her to take her writing to a bigger arena “where I might bloom.” The out-of-state university she favored was out-of-reach financially, so she turned to SOU.

It proved a good choice. Determined to be a star student but unsure of her skills, early on she asked a favorite professor, who was also her advisor, how she was measuring up. “If it weren’t for your grammar, you would be a star,” he told her. Stung by his comment, Asela flirted with changing her major from a BA in creative writing to communications. She didn’t, dug in, and began to flourish.

I became ecstatic. I got to meet amazing writers, to engage with different books, to meet community members involved in the arts. It allowed me to engage with the community around what I love most: books.”

Like Alec, graduating into a COVID constrained world, Asela put off graduate school and looked for editing jobs. She landed a job at an online magazine called Variety Pack, then moved on to be an editor for Sampguita, also an online literary magazine that focuses on community authors, especially black and indigenous, and people of color. 

Recently, she was invited to be an editorial director for Sanguinita’s new publishing press.

“We just published our first literary-zine and our first book!” she proudly told her Zoom listeners.

“I’m glad I took my dad’s advice—I miss him—to go to SOU. It all started with that.”

Nadine: Passing It On

Thirty years elapsed from when Nadine dropped out of college as a young adult and returned at midlife.

Going back to college after a short break (30 years!) was rough. Since then, I became a wife and a mom and got involved in life. Fast forward to 2015. I was working two full-time jobs and coaching middle school volleyball while raising three busy kids.  Then, my dad became terminally ill. During one of our conversations, he made me promise to finish school. He felt that he missed out on so many things by not finishing college. So, that day, I enrolled at Rogue Community College (RCC) to restart my academic journey.”

Nadine explained:

In high school, I was not a good student. I didn’t realize that until I got my high school transcript and saw my GPA and realized what that meant. I had to dig myself out of the weeds. What got me there was not  being advised in high school. I grew up in the 80’s and they really picked and chose who they were going to talk to. If you were popular and had good grades, they talked to you about college. They talked to you about scholarships. I was not one of those students.”

At Rogue Community College, Nadine learned about TRIO, a collection of national college-based programs started more than 50 years ago to address serious social and cultural barriers to higher education in America. She failed to meet one of the program’s entrance requirements: passing algebra. She found a tutor, worked hard, and earned admission a few months later.

For Nadine, it was her TRIO advisor that helped her extend her reach. “I wanted to do more than simply finish college. I decided I wanted to be an academic advisor, myself, and spent my college journey working towards that end.”

She transferred to SOU, graduating magna cum laude in 2020, and this fall she’ll receive her masters in counseling.  She is currently part of the TRIO advisory staff at Rogue Community College, advising other students following in her footsteps, students for whom college poses steep obstacles and encouragement is essential. 

Chyna: Advisors Who Care

When it was Chyna’s turn to speak, the words poured out. Hers is a powerful story of the difference caring, supportive adults can make in the lives of young people buried in poverty.

I didn’t really think about going to college until, maybe, my sophomore year. I couldn’t turn to my mom, it would be like a foreign conversation, she wouldn’t have any answers for me.

“What actually pushed me to go to college was an opportunity from Ms. Anderson, our college prep program administrator. She was like, ‘Oh come join this program where we help teach you how to interview for a job and how to interview for college.’ I think she really wanted me to have some kind of support because of what I was going through. I was more or less homeless.

“Senior year she said to me, ‘We have to get you into school.’ Every day she emailed me making sure I was looking for colleges, when she asked me if I knew what I wanted to do and I said no, she said, ‘Let’s just get you into school and then you can figure it out.’ I spent hours and hours looking for colleges, preparing my resume and more. I couldn’t go home to do this, so I stayed at the library until it closed at night.

“I finally found Midland University in Nebraska, which had wrestling and criminal justice, which I’d gotten interested in. I’d started wrestling when I was in middle school, it was something that set me apart. I wasn’t musically inclined, I wasn’t a great writer, I couldn’t dance—I didn’t have any rhythm, I was terrible at running, I don’t know how to swim. These eliminated any other sport or activity. Wrestling happened to be something my friends were involved in. I didn’t want to give it up when I went to college.

“I got in, I took the letter to my mom—and she was the first person to crush my dream of going to college. I had received an athletic scholarship, but it covered only half of what I would need.

“How can you afford it?” she asked immediately. “I’m not paying for it!”

“I remember going back to class on Monday and telling Ms. Anderson, ‘I don’t think I should go to college.’ I explained that I don’t have any money, I work at Taco Bell. ‘That’s what loans are for,’ she said. She and her husband ended up taking me in and boarding me off to college.”

Chyna’s first year at Midland went well enough. Sophomore year, her wrestling coach started questioning her commitment to the team, saying that she wasn’t training enough. She was holding down two jobs to help pay tuition, often working all night and then going to morning practice (and sleeping in class). The coach cut her from the team. She was devastated.

Chyna searched for a four-year college that might accept her as a transfer student and started to communicate with one of the TRIO advisors at SOU, which had both a wrestling team and courses in criminal justice. By now, COVID had closed the campus at Midland University and Chyna, with no home to go to, was living in her car.

Samantha, the advisor at SOU, (virtually) threw her arms around Chyna. “You just come here,” she emailed. “We’ll house you. We’ll educate you. We’ll provide you with everything you need.”

A month later Chyna arrived at SOU, sight unseen. She will graduate next June. It’s taken her an extra year to finish her coursework, which is “hard to swallow,” she said. “But heck, I made it through college, I beat the odds.” She’ll apply to law school, hoping to become a judge advocate in the military.  

Adding It Up

In the Q & A that followed, OLLI students filled the Zoom chat with questions. What lessons would they offer students following in their footsteps? What supports, beyond those they received, would have eased their journeys? How much debt had they accumulated? Did they ever feel like they were imposters on campus, not as prepared as other students? 

“I am speechless,” 68-year-old Millie wrote me in an email the next day, contrasting her experiences with theirs. “In my world, it was senior prom, then off to college.”

For my part, I was reminded again how humbled I am when I hear stories like Alec’s, Asela’s, Nadine’s, and Chyna’s. I am reminded of how incredibly diverse students on a college campus can be: we have no idea what their hopes, experiences, and challenges are.

The perseverance of these first-generation students is as immense as my economic privilege.

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