Listen to Michelle Perez and Halee Simpson, first-generation students.
They were once in your shoes.
Perez was not only the first in her immediate family to attend college, her journey into higher education took her into an entirely different world. She left Puerto Rico for the bright lights of New York City to attend Manhattan College in the late 80s. She recalls stepping off the plane with two suitcases and a small box for her clock radio and hair dryer.
No bed sheets. No pillows. Little things.
“So much learning happened that first semester,” she says today. “I didn’t even have a winter coat. I remember that first fall cold snap — I answered with extra layers of T-shirts. A friend took off her coat one day and gave it to me. There were so many other things I needed that I and my parents didn’t know I needed, and I was too worried about asking my parents and causing them more grief.”
She endured, earning her degree in four years. She went on to earn a master’s degree from Florida State two years later. A doctor of education degree came in 2016.
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Today, she’s the assistant vice president for student success at Campbell University, succeeding Jennifer Latino last fall after leading similar programs at the University of Arizona and Millersville University in Pennsylvania for the past 12 years. A first-generation student and a student coming in from Puerto Rico, Perez beat the odds. And she took notice of the things that made her own college experience easier.
The encouragement from a professor; the approachability of a dean, advisor or mentor — a friend who sees that you need a coat in New York City — these go a long way toward helping a first-generation student’s confidence.
“One thing I like that Campbell does is the requirement that freshmen live on campus,” Perez says. “There are some first-generation families that might find this as a challenge or a financial burden, but it’s a very purposeful requirement to help students immerse themselves completely in an academic culture. It works for the majority of students, living in a community of peers who are experiencing the same growing pains, making the same mistakes. They’re also closer to trained staff and professionals who are here to help them whenever they’re needed.”
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The coat was important. But Perez had other worries as a college freshman, like what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.
Her father worked in the post office, so all she knew heading into college was the postal industry and what she learned in high school. She knew she enjoyed sports, so she chose physical education as her major at Manhattan College. Her graduate degrees were more in line with her eventual career in higher education (not to say the P.E. degree wasn’t valuable, she stresses).
“It wasn’t until I got to college that I learned engineering was a thing,” she says. “I was good at math, too, but I didn’t know that would translate to a career in engineering. It was a foreign concept to me. But now that I’ve been through it, my girls won’t be first-generation students. They’ll know more about the majors and the career opportunities ahead of them because of me. Every time they express something that interests them now, I say let’s cultivate that interest.
“If all you know is ‘doctor, teacher, lawyer,’ then you’ve really narrowed your opportunities.”
Halee Simpson knew in high school that she liked math and science and was pretty good in both subjects. What that would mean for her future, she was less certain.
The daughter of a Cumberland County tobacco farmer and a cosmetologist, Halee knew early on that college was in the cards, but she was faced with just one of the obstacles that most first-generation students experience — choosing a career. Fortunate for Halee, her father was friends with a local pharmacist, and one of her summers in high school was spent shadowing him and getting a peek at the industry.
“I ended up working there a year and a half,” she says. “And I fell in love with it. I liked how he was so involved in his community, and I saw the impact he had and the trust his patients had in him.”
Today, Halee is in her fourth year at Campbell and is a first-year PharmD student. She’s already a success story — a good student who is heavily involved in her sorority and academic clubs and an advocate for other first-generation students. In October, she spoke in Fayetteville at one of the “An Evening with J. Bradley Creed” presidential tour events touting student scholarships and fundraising goals for a new student union.
She says she wants to take her doctorate and turn it into a career working as a pharmacist in a small, rural community like the one she grew up in. Like the one where she saw another pharmacist make a difference.
Her parents didn’t attend college, but they knew the right people to show her the way. Her advice to other first-generation students is heed your parents’ advice, regardless of their background.
“Even though you think your parents don’t know what you’re experiencing, it’s important to remember they raised you and they want you to succeed,” she says. “Don’t leave them behind. Seek their advice. They have it, whether they’ve been through this or not.”
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FAMILY AMARI SIMPSON