First Generation Faculty at Foster

“I LOVE working with and supporting my first-generation students. As a fellow first-generation student, I know how important support and resources can be when you are trying to navigate an overwhelming system. Know that we are here to help!”

“I never thought going to college was special – it was just the natural thing to do. This perspective is due to my parents, especially my mom, who always taught me that after high school, I need to go to college, and perhaps even beyond. I never considered not going to college. Thus, the credit is due to my parents and I’m eternally grateful.”

“Neither one of my parents had the chance to attend high school: it was common in 1950s/60s Spain for teenagers to work full-time unless they had the means to continue in school beyond eighth grade. I was incredibly lucky to be born one generation later, at a time when the family and community you were born into no longer determined whether you could afford to continue your education, or the resources that would fund your local primary and secondary schools.

That allowed me to gain admission to a selective public university, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where great faculty such as Antonio Cabrales, Xavier Calsamiglia, Jan Eeckhout, Teresa Garcia-Mila, Adriana Kugler, and Diego Rodriguez Palenzuela ignited my passion for economics and encouraged me to consider doing a PhD —something I did not even know existed growing up! Thanks to their support and mentorship, and to a Fundación “la Caixa” fellowship, I was admitted to Massachusetts Institute of Technology where I learned from some of the best economists in the world and earned my PhD. It is also where my devotion to teaching began: to help ensure that others too would have the opportunities to be mentored, to be seen, to be told ‘you belong and you can go far’ even if they are the first in their families to pursue higher education.”

“I am so thankful that the market-oriented reforms that started in the late 1970s in China provided me the opportunity, which was not available to the early generation, to go to college. It allowed me to embark on a journey beyond my wildest childhood imagination. I hope to inspire my students at Foster to embrace every opportunity coming from the biggest changes in our current time.”

“My advice to first generation students is to take advantage of mentorship opportunities and career resources. Foster has a wonderful array of academic advisers, career service professionals, faculty, administrators, and staff who are eager to listen and provide their diverse perspectives on the many opportunities your hard work at Foster can lead to. Please do not hesitate to ask for our time as you seek your path!”

“As a first-generation college student, I had to navigate many things on my own – major selection, courses, activities, career planning – and still was not quite sure if I maximized my college experience. This gives me a greater appreciation of what the UW first-gen students are going through. I am going to do my very best to help them avoid detours and enjoy all the wonderful things that UW has to offer.”

“Being a First Gen student felt like being plunked down in a foreign land where I didn’t know the customs, speak the language, or understand the culture. It was wonderfully exotic but also extraordinarily confusing. But stepping far outside of my comfort zone, realizing that almost no one has it all figured out in the way it might superficially appear, and asking for help and guidance from faculty, from staff, and from fellow students provided a map. I still had to make the hike, but I wasn’t alone.”

“My grandparents emigrated from Japan to Hawaii in the early 1900’s to work in the sugar cane fields. They didn’t have the means to send my parents to college so my parents (especially my father) was determined to have his three daughters attend college. It was not a matter of if we would go to college or even where – they could only afford in-state tuition at the University of Hawaii. But all three of us were able to graduate from college. When I graduated with my Ph.D., my father was so proud. It made all the hard work worthwhile. Higher education is a gift and I was blessed to have that opportunity. I realize that not everyone is as lucky. I guess my advice to first-gen students is to treasure that gift and everyone that made it possible.”

“My parents did not have the opportunity to go beyond elementary school, but they always placed the education of their children as top priority. They worked in two cities when I was ready to go to school, and my mom insisted on sending me to where my dad worked because his city was bigger and the schools were much better. Not being able to be with me was so hard for her, she boarded the wrong bus going back after leaving me to my dad. Without the dedication of my parents, I would not have had the chance to go to college. College life was an eye-opening experience for me. I had to make the transition from the pride of a small town to one of many who were equally, if not more, intelligent and hardworking. I remember looking up to the best professors and aspiring to become one like them. I was lucky to further my studies in US and learn from the greatest minds in the world. They taught me how to do research, and most importantly had a great influence on me to become a person who is humble and appreciative. I am very thankful to my parents, teachers, and mentors for where I am now, and hope I can follow their great examples to be helpful to my students.”

“My parents raised us so that going to college and grad school was the normal path; the path they would have chosen under different circumstances. I am very grateful to them for ingraining this in me. Looking back, I realize this was one of their greatest gift. Every first-gen student’s story and background is different. I guess my advice is to fully embrace the opportunity. You’ve made it here, you might as well make the most out of it!”

“A memory was that of my mother, who was the 10th of 11 children born to a sharecropper family in southeast Missouri. After my father died when I was a teenager she was truly an inspiration for me as a single mom. Although she didn’t have opportunities for an education growing up, she recognized the importance of education and the opportunities it could create for me.”

“I am the only person in my family who has graduated from college. Here was my motivation: My father was born in 1922 (he was in his 40’s when I was born) and lived on a farm in rural Tennessee. In those times, children were only able to go to school until they were strong enough to work on the farm. My father was the youngest of 7 children, so he went to school the longest. He made it to the 8th grade. He wanted more for me, so I was very proud to graduate from college, which was not an option for him.”

“I grew up in a working-class union home. I was a latch-key-kid being raised, for the most part, by a single mom. No one in my family had ever gone to college, including my mom, my grandma, my great-grandparents and so on. Grandma did apparently get a full-ride scholarship to go to college when she was young but women didn’t do that, “sort of thing” so she used the money to go to secretarial school. She encouraged me when no one else did. I hope she can see me now. My message is simple: yes, you can!

I had no money. No scholarships. No plan. I have dyslexia, dyscalculia and, as it turns out, ADHD (Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity-Disorder), which I did not even know was a thing! I am also a gay man, which wasn’t always so “trendy.” I even learned to fight because of it.

My family did teach me about “hard work.” That, and grandma’s encouragement, got me started and helped me get through. I worked full-time to pay for school and graduated cum laude from this very institution. I had to ask what, “cum laude” meant; it was actually very embarrassing. I thought I had done something wrong! The look on Professor Campbell’s face was priceless when he took a moment to think about how to answer my question. Anyway, I ended going to law school and becoming a successful attorney and through no plan of my own ended up having the opportunity to teach at the Foster School of Business. Everyday, I feel blessed for my education and everything it has helped me to achieve. It is worth every penny, every tear, and every doubt. Trust me, you can do this too.”

“I was the first person in my family to go to college. After a stint in the US Navy, my dad retired to become a subsistence farmer. During my formative years, my parents grew / raised what we ate and sold some flowers, eggs and milk when we had excess. My parents valued intellectual curiosity but going to college wasn’t an expectation nor something they had experience with. I was fortunate that some members of the community I grew up in saw some potential in me and encouraged me to purse education beyond high school… bachelors and master’s degrees plus a CFA Charter and I’m enjoying learning as much as ever. My personal motto, be the person you needed when you were younger, probably stems from the encouragement I received at that critical stage in my life. In my case, college opened doors that I could barely imagine when I was picking rocks out of some field or tending to the flock of chickens.”

“I was first in my family to go to college. I worked my way through. It was worth the hard work. It was an enriching experience and opened many opportunities for work and travel that would not otherwise have been available.”