Lucia's Journey of Bridging Two Worlds: Counseling Latinx First-Generation College Students

Introduction

Lucia is a Latina first-generation college student (FGCS) attending a predominantly white institution, a state university in her hometown, located in a large metropolitan city in the Southern United States. In higher education settings, FGCS refers to students whose parents did not attend college or any postsecondary institution (Wang & Castañeda-Sound, 2008). When she entered college, Lucia began pursuing a degree in mechanical engineering. However, early on in her transition to college, she began experiencing some struggles. As a result, Lucia accessed counseling services on her campus at the start of her sophomore year. In her intake session, Lucia discussed having a difficult time balancing school, work, and home responsibilities. From an outside perspective, it could appear that Lucia’s presenting concern relates to time management issues, a typical struggle college students experience. Often times, college students are viewed as a homogeneous group. However, undergraduate students are quite diverse; they hold an intersection of identities related to race, ethnicity, class, social economic status, gender, sexual orientation, and ability.

Lucia, like many Latinx FGCS, was struggling with navigating the culture of higher education (e.g., understanding degree expectations, connecting with faculty, and locating campus resources). This was coupled with Lucia also navigating issues of marginality on her campus: not seeing Latinx representation, institutional invalidation, and microaggressions. For low-income FGCS, the campus environment can provide validating or invalidating experiences, which in turn can have a positive or negative impact on their college persistence (Rendón, 1994; Rendón Linares & Munoz, 2011). Validation occurs for FGCS when “an enabling, confirming and supportive process [is] initiated by in- and out-of-class agents that fosters [the] academic and interpersonal development” of these students (Rendón, 1994, p. 44). The focused is placed on how faculty, staff, peers on campus are cultivating a welcoming and supportive environment for FGCS. Invalidating actions include “faculty who students believe are unapproachable, inaccessible, and often dehumanizing toward students” (Rendón & Munoz, 2011, p. 20). For Lucia, the invalidating actions she experienced on campus made her question if she was “college material.” Lucia also experienced various forms of microaggressions on her campus. Microagressions are:

In her first semester, Lucia had an engineering faculty member who questioned her openly in class whether her inner-city high school had strong enough classes to prepare her for a career in engineering. Another incident occurred when Lucia visited her academic advisor for support after she fell behind in one of her courses. The academic advisor told Lucia she seemed more suitable for a career in education instead of engineering, because Latinas typically had a difficult time completing their engineering degrees. Lucia did not share her experiences of institutional invalidation and microaggressions with others, especially those in positions of power. She learned in high school that bringing up concerns about institutional invalidation and microaggressions could cause more unwanted negative attention. For instance, school officials not believing her and the staff members retaliating with more microaggressions.