CWU proud to join national FirstGen Forward Network

It’s no secret that students who are the first in their families to attend college face additional barriers to success throughout their higher education journey.

The hurdles first-generation students encounter range from a lack of familiarity with academic procedure to feeling alienated from the broader, more integrated campus community — all of which can contribute to a struggle to keep up with their studies.

In Central Washington University’s push to improve access and opportunity, lowering these barriers is a critical component of living into our vision for the future. To this end, CWU has formally joined the FirstGen Forward Network, a national collaboration of over 515 higher education institutions aimed at fostering student success through shared knowledge, professional development, and research.

Director of Early College Outreach Manuel Rodriguez and Eastside University Centers Regional Director Monica Medrano oversaw CWU’s application to join the program over the past year, and they are confident that becoming a member will deliver even more positive outcomes for first-gen students at Central.

“Joining this coalition is part of us being very vocal and intentional about our commitment to first-generation students, and the student population in general,” Rodriguez said. “This isn’t just us adding our name to a list; there’s an accountability on our part to count ourselves among the FirstGen Forward member institutions. We need to be doing the work to deliver for our students.”

Rodriguez and Medrano both attended CWU in the early 2000s and now serve the institution in roles aimed at broadening access to the type of education that helps define students’ futures.

“In the early 2000s, when we went here, Central didn’t have a very diverse student population,” Medrano said. “Now that we work here, that diversity is growing, and we — and many others at CWU — are invested in making sure we use our resources to support our first-generation students and students of color.”

Becoming a member institution of the FirstGen Forward Network is the latest step in the university’s years-long effort to support success for students from all walks of life. This work has been taken on by organizations across campus, such as the Douglas Honors College, the First-gen Student Organization, the TRIO programs, the JumpStart program, and many other partners in ensuring access and opportunity are more than just words in our vision statement.

“We have been laying the groundwork on how best to support our Latinx students for four or five years now, which translates very well into what the network expects of us as a member institution,” Medrano said. “We can use that data as a blueprint for painting this more complete picture of our current student landscape, and share what we have learned with our fellow member institutions.”

About 40% of the current student body are transfer students, with many of those being the first in their family to attend college. Rodriguez knows that all efforts to support these students will ultimately lead to a more accessible college experience for everyone.

“In supporting one population of students, we support them all and move the university as a whole forward,” he said. “Our campus and our community will benefit from a more broadly accessible college experience where students from all walks of life succeed and some, like Monica and I, return to keep building on that foundation.”

During First-Generation Student Week from November 2-8, CWU will host a variety of events aimed at engaging the first-generation population in Ellensburg, online, and at the university centers around the state. The event was first hosted by the Douglas Honors College (DHC) in 2022, and has since grown to encompass all of the campus community.

“Nationally, first-gen students make up less than 30% of honors students,” said DHC Executive Director Chris Denison. “We launched this celebration to encourage first-gen students to see themselves as honors students. I am proud to say our efforts have increased the number of first-gen students participating in honors.”

The festivities will include a celebration at the SURC Ballroom on Wednesday, November 4, at 5:30 p.m., as well as First-Gen Cafés hosted by the different colleges on campus on November 3 and 5. The week of celebration coincides with the passage of the Higher Education Act of 1965 on November 8, which increased access to higher education for lower- and middle-income students.

“There’s a component of celebration to this work as well,” Rodriguez said. “We want to celebrate our students, staff, and faculty who have broken new ground for their families by being the first to go to college. That’s part of where our focus lies for this first year as part of the FirstGen Forward Network.”

Medrano emphasized that the first-generation experience doesn’t stop at graduation, nor should the support being offered.

“Those first-generation hurdles don’t go away just because you’re done being a student,” she said. “Once you’re the first person in your family to have a degree, you’ll be the first person in your family to have a job that requires a degree, and so on. The need for support never stops, so we aim to provide it for faculty and staff as well.”