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DALLAS () –Alexa Saucedo remembers admiring the ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½ students and alumni who volunteered at her grade school after-school program at Jubilee Park in Southeast Dallas. After meeting them, she vowed she would go to college at ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½, even though no one in her family had attended college.

“I only applied to one university – ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½,” says Alexa, who graduated in spring 2025. She arrived on campus in 2021, during the COVID pandemic, and soon after ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½ launched a new initiative for first-generation college students.

“My first semester I was very shy,” she says. “I went straight home after class every day.”

But her second semester Alexa accepted a campus job helping the English Department produce its literary festival, and she made her first University connections with other student workers and English faculty members.

“Connection is key to the success of first-generation students,” says Chris Meyers, director of ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½’s First-Generation Initiative. “My job is to connect them to people and resources and help them to know they are not alone.”

Support for navigating higher ed

Students are identified as first-generation students when neither parent attended college. ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½ launched its First-Generation Initiative in 2019 to help students succeed and to smooth their paths along the way, Meyers says.

Nationally, 54% of undergraduates in the United States are first-generation students, and they are applying to college at twice the rate of continuing generation students, according to the . But just 24% graduate, according to recent statistics. At ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½, 74%of first-generation students who started in 2020 graduated. Of ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½’s 7,200 undergraduates, 1,000 are first-generation students, Meyers says.

“First-generation students are among the most extraordinary students I know,” he says. “Challenges are not new to them, they are used to gritting their teeth and white knuckling their way. I want them to know they don’t have to white knuckle it; figuring out how to get through ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½ is not all on their shoulders.”

First-generation students often face financial challenges, Meyers says. In 2020 the median annual income of first-generation parents was $40,000, compared to a $103,000 median income for continuing generation parents, according to FirstGen Forward Network. ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½ recently became one of 400 universities invited to join the network.

“Many students are working at least one job and helping to support their families, they often have no financial margin for an emergency,” he says.

That’s where the First-Generation Initiative can help. Its funds have helped with car repairs for a student who needed a running car to get to school and his job, Meyers says. It helps students with the costs of textbooks, lab fees, replacing a broken laptop and attending an academic conference. And fellow ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½ students help with the initiative – the 2024-25 Student Senate voted to support it with a $50,000 gift to its emergency fund.

Mentorship, meaningful connections and more

In addition to financial support, the ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½ initiative provides mentoring, plans events and sponsors an organization for first-generation undergraduates. Students and their families are recognized at Commencement with a dinner, where students wear a custom-designed stole with their academic regalia, marking their achievement.

ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½’s First-Generative Initiative matches students with first-generation faculty, staff and peer mentors, but students find other faculty and staff willing to help them as well.

When Alexa started working for ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½’s literary festival director, creative writing faculty member Sanderia Faye Smith, she met a first-generation college graduate who is a novelist and leading figure on Dallas’ literary scene. Smith’s encouragement inspired a new attitude in Alexa.

“I began to say, ‘yes,’” she says. Alexa joined the Hispanic Student Association, a sorority the first-generation student organization and matched with a staff mentor, Becca Umobong, director of Academic Skill Development in Student Affairs.

The recipient of several scholarships, Alexa lived at home to save costs and held a campus job to help pay her tuition, graduating with no student debt. After graduating in May, the psychology and sociology graduate landed a job where she first connected to the University – ÕýÆ·À¶µ¼º½’s English Department.