CREATING COLLEGE-GOING CULTURES FOR OUR CHILDREN:
NARRATIVES OF TRIO UPWARD BOUND PROGRAM ALUMNI
Dissertation
Submitted to
The School of Education and Health Sciences of the
UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
The Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in Educational Leadership
By
Ieesha On’trel Ramsey, M.A.
UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON
Dayton, Ohio
December 2019
CREATING COLLEGE-GOING CULTURES FOR OUR CHILDREN:
NARRATIVES OF TRIO UPWARD BOUND PROGRAM ALUMNI
Name: Ramsey, Ieesha On’trel
APPROVED BY:
Mary B. Ziskin, Ph.D. Committee Chair
Pamela Cross Young, Ph.D. Committee Member
Michele Welkener, Ph.D. Committee Member
Ruth Thompson-Miller, Ph.D. Committee Member
ii
ABSTRACT
CREATING COLLEGE-GOING CULTURES FOR OUR CHILDREN:
NARRATIVES OF TRIO UPWARD BOUND PROGRAM ALUMNI
Name: Ramsey, Ieesha On’trel University of Dayton
Doctoral Committee Chair: Mary Ziskin, Ph.D.
This qualitative research study used critical narrative inquiry methods to investigate the experiences of TRIO Upward Bound Program alumni during their program participation, and to explore how those experiences, according to participants’ own accounts, influenced their creation of a college-college going culture in their households for their own children. TRIO Upward Bound is a federally funded college access program that serves first-generation, low-income high school students, providing support and motivation to pursue higher education. Study participants were alumni of
TRIO Upward Bound Programs in the state of Ohio who have earned a baccalaureate degree or higher, and are now the parents of college-enrolled or college-graduated children. The theoretical frameworks utilized in these analyses were cultural and social capital, and funds of knowledge. Study participants described receiving assistance with their high school-to-college transition, academic support, and mentoring through their participation in Upward Bound. They also shared that Upward Bound exposed them to experiences that increased their cultural and social capital, building upon the funds of knowledge they had received from the parents and other family members. The participants further recounted how they used their Upward Bound Program experiences
iii to shape college-going cultures in their homes, and create pathways into higher education for their children. Implications for practice involving student recruitment, alumni connections, and creating college-going cultures are detailed, as well as implications for policy that include increased funding for TRIO Programs, participant tracking beyond six years after high school graduation, and changes in federal reporting structures.
iv
DEDICATION
Dedicated to the ancestors whose shoulders I stand upon and the four women who raised me—my mother, Bettye Ramsey; my grandmother, “Momo” Rebecca Ramsey; my aunt,
“Mama Gladys” Hughes; and my aunt, Sarah Walker. And to the one who stands on my
shoulders—my daughter, Natalia I. Perkins. I hope I have made you all proud.
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my Doctoral Committee for their guidance and support throughout my doctoral journey—Dr. Mary Ziskin, Dr. Pam Young, Dr. Michele Welkener, and Dr.
Ruth Thompson-Miller. I could not have gotten to the finish line without you.
I would like to acknowledge Eddie L. Chambers for his support, assistance, input, and expertise throughout the research process. Without your assistance, this research project would not have been possible.
I would like to thank the study participants who were bold enough to share their stories, giving voice to the success of the TRIO Upward Bound Program. You put in the work to make TRIO Upward Bound work.
I would like to acknowledge all of the TRIO practitioners, past, present, and future, who do the social justice work of creating college access and education opportunity for those from underrepresented backgrounds. It is often a thankless job, but this research study shows that you make more of a difference than you may ever know.
I would like to remember always my dear friend and fellow scholar, Emily A. Hicks who supported me throughout my doctoral journey and gained her wings right at the very end.
Rest in power dear friend. You will live on in my mind and heart forever.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ...... iii
DEDICATION ...... v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... vi
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1
Study Overview ...... 3
Topic and Purpose...... 4
First-generation College Students ...... 5
Barriers to College Access ...... 7
TRIO Upward Bound Program ...... 10
College-Going Culture ...... 13
Potential Significance of the Study ...... 16
Theoretical Framework and General Research Questions ...... 17
Cultural Capital ...... 17
Social Capital ...... 19
Funds of Knowledge ...... 20
Limitations ...... 21
CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 23
Overview ...... 23
vii
First-generation College Student Success ...... 24
TRIO Upward Bound Program ...... 28
Upward Bound Program Participant Experiences ...... 32
Parental Involvement ...... 37
Parental Support of First-Generation College Students ...... 42
Parental Involvement and TRIO Upward Bound Program ...... 46
College-Going Culture ...... 49
Conclusion ...... 56
CHAPTER 3 DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY ...... 59
Overall Approach and Rationale ...... 59
Critical Theory ...... 59
Narrative Inquiry ...... 62
Study Participant Selection Criteria ...... 67
Participant Selection and Recruitment ...... 69
Access, Role, Trust, and Rapport...... 70
Ethical and Political Considerations ...... 71
Data Collection Methods ...... 72
Data Analysis Procedures ...... 75
Procedures to Address Trustworthiness and Credibility ...... 77
Researcher Positionality...... 78
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CHAPTER 4 STUDY PARTICIPANT NARRATIVES ...... 81
Overview ...... 81
Late 60s/Early 70s...... 82
Brian Henderson ...... 82
Sophia Comer-Stiles ...... 87
Sarah Eugene ...... 94
Janet Robinson ...... 98
Late 70s/Early 80s...... 103
Angela Roe...... 103
Darryl Thompson ...... 107
Deborah “Dee Dee” Dennison ...... 113
Bethany Martin ...... 119
Sonia Dixon ...... 124
Late 80s/Early 90s...... 130
Lewis Daniels...... 131
Khalil and Nicole Davis ...... 135
Antonio Sparks...... 145
Xavier Evans ...... 148
CHAPTER 5 FINDINGS ...... 157
Study Participants’ Upward Bound Program Experiences ...... 157
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Pathways for Study Participants ...... 158
Academic Success ...... 161
High School-to-College Transition ...... 164
Mentoring and Role Models ...... 165
Forms of Capital and Funds of Knowledge ...... 167
Cultural Capital ...... 167
Social Capital ...... 169
Funds of Knowledge ...... 171
College-going Culture ...... 174
Pathways for Study Participants’ Children ...... 175
Forms of Capital ...... 182
Emergent Themes ...... 188
Racial Identity ...... 189
The Media’s Influence on College-Going ...... 191
Conclusion ...... 193
CHAPTER 6 DISCUSSION ...... 197
Discussion of Findings ...... 198
Pathways ...... 198
Forms of Capital ...... 202
Implications...... 204
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Implications for Practice ...... 208
Implications for Policy ...... 214
Implications for Future Research ...... 215
Conclusion ...... 220
REFERENCES ...... 223
APPENDIX A Documentation of Data Collection and Analysis ...... 244
Interview Protocol ...... 244
Invitation to Participate Form ...... 246
List of Codes ...... 247
Coding Screenshots ...... 248
Study Participant Characteristics Table ...... 251
APPENDIX B Reflexive Journal ...... 252
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
As a first-generation college student, I experienced many of the barriers and challenges found in the literature about being the first in my family to attend college.
Having a working-class, single mother, I was limited in the number of colleges she was able to tour with me to make an informed decision about what college to attend. Of the four campuses I toured, my mother was only available to tour one of those institutions with me to help me make that decision. I remember her and my aunt taking me to a college fair in Cobo Hall in Detroit my senior year of high school. This was the extent of my prospective college student experiences.
Information was not shared with me about how to select an academic program of study and how that major would prepare me for a future career in that field. And while my mother pushed me to take the most challenging courses possible in high school, she did not understand, and therefore was not able to convey, the significance of taking more
Advanced Placement courses, sitting for the Advanced Placement exams, or taking advantage of dual enrollment opportunities. I took all honors courses and two Advanced
Placement courses. However, I only sat for one of those exams for fear of failure of the other. The importance of the ACT and SAT exams was not stressed in my household. I understood that they were necessary for college admission, but there was no emphasis put on test preparation. I took no preparation courses and attended no workshops to enhance my knowledge or familiarity of the exam in an effort to increase my score. I took the exam a second time to try to boost my score, but my score was lower the second time.
1
Both times I took the exam, there was no prior preparation. Preparation courses were deemed too expensive and did not fit into my family’s budget. And although I scored college-ready, the score was not high enough to earn me college scholarship money.
My family was lower-middle class and I was, therefore, not eligible for federal
Pell monies. Yet we could not afford to pay the ‘expected family contribution’ (EFC) determined in the financial aid process. I took out mostly loans to cover the cost of my college education until I was fortunate to earn scholarship money the last two years in my undergraduate career. Rather than focusing wholly on my academics while enrolled in undergrad, I struggled to find ways to pay for college, including working (as an English tutor in the Writing Lab and typing students’ hand-written essays on the side while on campus; and as a sales associate, mail sorter and custodian at the post office during breaks from school) and scholarship searching during the academic year.
I did not understand how accumulating debt through student loans would affect my life after college. My mother had a well-paying job working for the State, but not necessarily a career. My uncles were assembly line workers at Chrysler. There was no real career guidance given from home because no one at home had that knowledge to give.
Growing up, I always heard the message of “When you go to college…”
Therefore, there was no doubt in my mind about what was supposed to happen for me after high school. My mother and extended family members stressed to me that a college education was the way to move up the socioeconomic ladder—that I could get really good jobs if I went to college. My mother emphasized me “doing better than she’d done.”
She surrounded me with people who were college-educated so that they could serve as
2 role models for me. Many of those people disseminated college and career information to me. High academic achievement was stressed, and even demanded in my household— mediocrity was not tolerated. The disconnect was that my mother did not know what she did not know about the college preparation and transition process. She taught me all she knew and in the end, it worked out well for me. However, as an educator who now works to create college access for high school students, I now realize all she did not know.
Study Overview
Parents play a vital role in the educational aspirations of their children. The education level of a student’s parent(s) has a direct bearing on the educational aspirations and opportunities of that student (Attewell & Lavin, 2007; Cataldi, Bennett & Chen,
2018). In a longitudinal study by Cataldi, Bennett and Chen (2018), students who had parents who completed a four-year baccalaureate degree graduated high school at a higher rate, enrolled in college at a higher rate, and persisted through and graduated from college at higher rates. Parents who had completed at least some college often had a higher socioeconomic status than those who completed no college, making it less likely that their child leaves college without graduating for financial reasons (Study
International Staff, 2018). The probability of a student enrolling in and graduating from college increases as a parent’s level of education increases (Choy, 2001).
What are college educated parents teaching their children that is different from parents without college degrees? How are they cultivating a higher level of academic achievement that serves to propel their children to and through college to earn degrees of their own? What do they do to create a culture and environment within their homes during child-rearing as it relates to education and college aspirations that is fundamental
3 for college degree attainment? Are there things that college educated parents are doing that can be done by parents who are not degree holders to influence their children in an effort to spark aspirations of college degree attainment in their children?
Topic and Purpose
Being the first in their families to attend college, first-generation college students, as a population, bring a specific set of challenges, strengths, and needs to campus, and arrive with varying degrees of preparation. All of these factors play into whether or not these students persist through to graduation. Parents of first-generation college students may be unfamiliar with how to provide proper support and guidance to their college- going children. Also, children with aspirations of attending college need to be exposed to college-going culture as part of the college preparation process—college-going culture may not be readily accessible to or experienced by children whose parents did not attend college. Therefore, the college access knowledge that parents who attended college share with their children, may not be shared with children whose parents did not attend college.
This critical qualitative research study using the methodology of narrative inquiry focused on TRIO Upward Bound Program alumni and college-going culture is useful for building the empirical record on the research problem, and for support, equity, and success for first-generation college students. TRIO Upward Bound Programs work specifically to create college-going cultures for high school students who would be the first in their families to attend college. They also help build those students’ cultural and social capital (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) through participation in the programs.
Therefore, I draw on forms of capital and funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff &
Gonzalez, 1992; Kiyama, 2011) as a theoretical framework for informing the study.
4
The next few sections detail the characteristics of this population of students and the barriers they face to college access. Next, the discussion turns to the TRIO Upward
Bound Program and how the program serves first-generation college students to address the issues they may face and remove the barriers to college access. Finally, college-going cultures re-examined within schools, homes, and the TRIO Upward Bound Program.
First-generation College Students
According to the U.S. Department of Education, and for the purpose of this study, a first-generation college student is indicative of a student, “neither of whose natural or adoptive parents has attained a baccalaureate degree” (Upward Bound Program, 1995, p.
1). A continuing-generation college student is a student who has at least one parent who has earned a baccalaureate degree or higher level of education (Redford & Hoyer, 2017).
Nearly one-third of students who begin undergraduate matriculation each year are first-generation (Skomsvold, 2014; Postsecondary National Policy Institute, 2016).
Unfortunately, these students do not graduate at the same rate as their continuing- generation peers the Postsecondary National Policy Institute (2016) indicates, citing a 14 percent difference in the six-year graduation rate between the two groups (64% continuing-generation versus 50% first-generation). First-generation college students are more likely to enroll in two-year and for-profit schools, as well as be female, and have dependents of their own. They are also more likely to not be of traditional college age
(Postsecondary National Policy Institute, 2016; Cataldi, Bennett & Chen, 2018; Attewell
& Lavin, 2007). First-generation college students generally tend to be students of racially and ethnically underrepresented groups. According to Chen and Carroll (2005),
“Compared with their peers whose parents were college graduates, first-generation
5 students were more likely to be Black or Hispanic and to come from low-income families” (p. iv).
Despite compulsory education since the 1920s and access to community colleges and other open-access institutions of higher education, “Roughly 30% of entering freshmen in the USA are first-generation college students, and 24% — 4.5 million — are both first-gens and low-income. Nationally, 89% of low-income first-gens leave college within six years without a degree” (Ramsey & Peale, 2010, p. 1). Because these students lack the guidance that a college-educated parent would give their son or daughter, first- generation students often have to navigate the collegiate landscape on their own—some of it being trial and error, while others are fortunate to receive guidance from a degree- holding mentor. These students often have different collegiate experiences than their continuing-generation peers. They may need to work to cover the costs of college attendance while their non-working peers are able to spend their free time partaking in campus engagement activities (Engle & Tinto, 2008).
First-generation students are also more likely to have to take remedial courses during their first two years of undergraduate life which can cause them to take longer than four years to graduate with a baccalaureate degree (Postsecondary Policy Institute,
2016). Children born to immigrant parents now make up nearly 20% of all college students in the United States, representing a population of students who are the first in their families to attend college, and are also English language learners (Engle, Bermeo &
O’Brien, 2006; Postsecondary Policy Institute, 2016; Community College Consortium for
Immigrant Education, 2015).
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Barriers to College Access
In the United States, higher education creates a pathway up the socioeconomic ladder for those who are fortunate to have the opportunity to pursue a college degree
(Greenstone, Mooney, Patashnik & Yu, 2013; The College Board National Office for
School Counselor Advocacy, 2010). However, there are many barriers to higher education, including but not limited to poor educational preparation in elementary and secondary schools, poor guidance on the necessary courses to take to become college ready, poor preparation and lack of resources to prepare for college entrance exams, financial barriers, and a general lack of knowledge in terms of navigating the transition process from high school to college admission and enrollment (Markowitz, 2017; Long,
2014). Barriers to college access exist more often for first-generation college students who are disproportionately from lower socioeconomic statuses, and belonging to racial and ethnic minority groups (Postsecondary National Policy Institute, 2016).
Poor college preparation. Poor preparation for college creates a major barrier to college access, beginning for many students on the K-12 level with a substandard quality of public education. This disproportionately affects first-generation, low-income, Black, and Latino populations, which often make up urban school districts (Postsecondary
National Policy Institute, 2016; Sabey, 2016). According to a Hechinger Report investigation, the vast majority of two- and four- year colleges across 44 states enroll students who are not college-ready (Butrymowicz, 2017). This results in colleges and universities needing to offer remedial courses to cover material that should have been learned on the K-12 level before students can move on to credit level courses. This is
7 especially true for open-admission institutions such as community colleges
(Butrymowicz, 2017).
High student-to-guidance counselor ratios. Poor college preparation on the K-12 level is further exacerbated by high student-to-guidance counselor ratios in high schools.
Only 17.8 percent of school districts in the United States meet the 250:1 ratio of students- to-guidance counselors set by the American School Counselor Association, with the median ratio being 411:1 (The College Board National Office for School Counselor
Advocacy, 2010). Urban and poorer districts tend to have the highest student ratios
(Gagnon & Mattingly, 2016). Guidance counselors provide college access information to high school students, including guidance on which courses a student should take to become college ready, information on colleges and universities, and reminders of college and financial aid application deadlines (The College Board National Office for School
Counselor Advocacy, 2010). Many students miss college preparation and college access information because they lack interactions with adults who can share that valuable information (Bright, 2017). First-generation students often depend on their guidance counselors to disseminate college information because they may not be receiving this information at home from their parents (Dockery, 2012). Lacking interactions with guidance counselors create an information void for first-generation students, especially those in urban and poorer districts where guidance counselor caseloads are highest.
College entrance exams. College entrance exams such as the ACT and SAT often present a barrier for first-generation and low-income students. ACT exam scores are often used to gauge a student’s college readiness, but are often a poor gauge as only 49 percent of White students score college-ready in math in comparison to a fourth of Latino
8 students, and just over 10 percent of African American students (Roderick, Nagaoka &
Coca, 2009). Less than 19 percent of all first-generation students met college-ready benchmarks in three of the four test subject areas, while 52 percent did not meet any
(ACT, 2016). First-generation students often come from school districts where challenging curriculum, which would prepare them to achieve on the ACT exam and in college, is absent. “Studies have shown that the students who typically score in the upper echelon of ACT/SAT scores are those who can offer to pay for extensive test preparation courses and resources” (Bright, 2017, p. 1). This often excludes first-generation students, particularly those of low socioeconomic status.
Financial barriers. Multiple financial barriers pose a threat to first-generation students looking to enroll in college. First-generation students tend to come from households with lower median incomes than their continuing-generation peers, resulting in a higher unmet financial need when paying for college, and the need to borrow larger amounts of money from the federal government to cover the costs of college attendance.
(Postsecondary National Policy Institute, 2016). The ever-increasing cost of a higher education puts a strain on families who may be coming from a low socioeconomic status
(Roble, 2017). And while the cost of a college education at a four-year public institution has risen 160% since 1980, federal student aid assistance has not kept pace, with low- income students paying a higher percentage of family income for college attendance
(Roble, 2017). And although the U.S. federal government does offer federal financial aid to students, gaining access to these funds requires the completion of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. Parents and first-generation students who are not
9 familiar with navigating the transition from high school to college may make mistakes in the process or miss important application deadlines (Sheehy, 2013).
TRIO Upward Bound Program
The federal government has acknowledged the barriers to college access that exists for first-generation college students in the United States and offers the TRIO
Upward Bound Program as one vehicle to overcome those barriers. The TRIO Upward
Bound Program is a federal grant-funded, pre-college program whose charge is to prepare first-generation, low-income students, and students at risk of academic failure to enter college and persist through to graduation (U.S. Department of Education, 2018). Birthed out of the Lyndon B. Johnson War on Poverty of the 1960s and the Higher Education Act of 1965, Upward Bound began as one of three programs created to increase college matriculation among low-income Americans. Eight programs housed under the umbrella of TRIO Programs now exist—Upward Bound, Upward Bound Math/Science, Veterans
Upward Bound, Educational Talent Search, Student Support Services, McNair Post baccalaureate, Educational Opportunity Centers, and the Training Program for Federal
TRIO Programs (U.S. Department of Education, 2018; U.S. Department of Education,
2015c; Groutt, 2003).
History. Commissioned by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, the Council of
Economic Advisors was charged with investigating poverty in the United States (Groutt,
2003). Following the assassination of President Kennedy, President Johnson declared a war on poverty in his first State of the Union Address, the passing of the Economic
Opportunity Act of 1964, and the forming of the Office of Economic Opportunity being his first strikes in the war (Groutt, 2003). Experimental programs were funded through
10 these new initiatives, one being Upward Bound, which targeted low-income high school students who showed promise to pursue postsecondary education (Groutt, 2003; U.S.
Department of Education, 2015b). Upward Bound was followed by Educational Talent
Search in 1965 and Student Support Services in 1968, the three programs forming the trio of federal programs for which TRIO Programs are named (U.S. Department of
Education, 2015b).
Present day Upward Bound. Today, TRIO Upward Bound utilizes a multifaceted approach to bridge the gap in college access for first-generation, low-income students
(U.S. Department of Education, 2016; Upward Bound Program, 1995). The U.S.
Department of Education defines low-income as having a household income that falls below 150% of the poverty line (Upward Bound Program, 1995). Per federal regulations,
Upward Bound programs are charged with providing specific services to participants: academic tutoring, academic advising, college entrance exam preparation, and financial aid assistance (Upward Bound Program, 1995). All Upward Bound Programs “must also provide instruction in mathematics, laboratory science, composition, literature, and foreign language” (Upward Bound Program, 2016, p. 1). Upward Bound Programs also provide ACT/SAT preparation to assist students in breaking the college access barrier of college entrance exams (U.S. Department of Education, 2015c). The programs provide assistance with understanding the financial aid process and with the financial aid application process to break down the financial barriers of attending college (U.S.
Department of Education, 2015c).
Host institutions eligible to receive Upward Bound grants are “institutions of higher education, public or private organizations, including community-based
11 organizations, secondary schools, and organizations that are a combination of the aforementioned institutions” (Upward Bound Program, 1995, p. 1). Students eligible to be served by an Upward Bound Program must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents of the U.S. or a U.S. territory; must be low-income, first-generation, or at high risk for academic failure; and must have completed the eighth grade and be between the ages of
13 and 19 (Upward Bound Program, 1995).
During the academic year, Upward Bound Programs must provide services to participants weekly, which include, but are not limited to tutoring, assistance with college prep course selection, college entrance exam preparation, assistance with college applications, and information on and assistance with financial aid (Upward Bound
Program, 1995). The summer component is six weeks in length and includes instruction in mathematics, science, language arts, and a foreign language, and may include a college campus residential experience (Upward Bound Program, 1995). Upward Bound
Programs may also offer a Summer Bridge component for program participants who have recently graduated from high school to allow them to take college courses and ease the transition from high school to college (Upward Bound Program, 1995).
In the 2017 Upward Bound grant competition, the U.S. Department of Education awarded a total of $312,052,710 in grant funds to 967 Upward Bound programs, serving
70,914 students nationally at an average expenditure of $5014 per student (U.S.
Department of Education, 2018). This is a huge progression from the program’s humble beginnings of 17 programs serving 2061 students in the summer of 1965 (Greenleigh
Associates Inc., 1970, as cited in Groutt 2003).
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College-Going Culture
According to Burke (2014), “Culture is ‘the way we do things around here’ and concerns deeply held beliefs, attitudes, and values” (p. 22). Culture involves patterns, whether formal or informal, and those patterns create the uniqueness of activities, behaviors, and norms within an organization (Corwin & Tierney, 2007). The sharing of a culture within a group is both implicit and explicit, and constitutes the passing on of those behaviors and beliefs from one generation to the next (Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952;
Parson, 1949). Organizations such as schools, colleges and universities, and even families each have a culture that is unique to their identity.
According to Corwin and Tierney (2007), a college-going culture is a culture in which the expectation of and motivation toward college attendance is promoted, encouraged, and continually reinforced. The expectation of college matriculation is espoused within the belief systems of both the adults and students. “A college-going culture helps all students set and achieve high goals and generates important values such as an appreciation of academics, the desire to succeed, and the drive to attend college and become a lifelong learner” (College Board, 2015, p. 1).
College-going cultures in schools. Educators acknowledge the importance of creating college-going cultures in schools. A college-going culture can be perpetuated throughout the entire school building, or through smaller groups within the building; however, it works best in smaller school buildings, or in small groups within larger buildings (Schneider, 2007). Schools with isolated college services tend to neglect a portion of its student population, while serving only a few (Corwin & Tierney, 2007).
Corwin and Tierney (2007) state that this is especially evident when the responsibility of
13 disseminating information about college rests solely on a school’s guidance counselors, rather than the faculty and staff as a whole. A school building needs a building-wide program of integrated college preparation activities that include not only academic, but social activities as well; where students’ career aspirations coincide with their educational goals, and students, school staff, and parents are all involved in the educational process
(Schneider, 2007).
In a research study, Welton & Williams (2014) found that high staff turnover contributed to a culture of leaving, which played a role in the detriment to creating a college-going culture in one particular high school. Students expected faculty to not return the following year, which was an impediment to what Holland and Farmer-Hinton
(2009) call the ethic of knowledge and care in college culture—if school staff have knowledge of the students and show that they care about students’ academic progress and well-being, it creates an environment ripe for creating a college-going culture in the school (Holland & Farmer-Hinton, 2009). Other barriers to college-going cultures in high schools, according to Welton and Williams (2014), include a culture of test interventions, rather than instruction brought on by state accountability mandates; a culture of deficit perceptions and lowered academic expectations; and decreased rigor in advanced courses.
College-going culture in the home. It is important that a college-going culture exist in schools. However, students need to hear those same messages reinforced, while experiencing the support and motivation of a college-going culture at home. Creating a college-going culture in the home increases the likelihood that a student will enroll in college after high school graduation (Simpkins, 2016). The creation of a college-going culture at home should involve the entire family with not only parents working to create
14 an environment ripe for college aspirations and high academic achievement, but also with siblings and extended family members contributing as well (Kiyama, 2011). One of the things parents can do to create this culture in their homes is sending continual messages to their children of expectations of college attendance and reinforcing the message of
‘when you go to college….’ rather than ‘if you go to college.’ (Gwinnett County Public
Schools, n.d.). Exploring career options at an early age, encouraging them to take challenging courses in high school, visiting local colleges and universities, attending college fairs, and providing the support needed for the student to navigate the college- going journey are all things that parents can do to create a college-going culture in the home (Simpkins, 2018). Taking their student to collegiate sporting events, allowing them to dress in college wear, and exploring scholarship and grant opportunities are a few other things parents can do to create college-going cultures in their homes (Gwinnett
County Public Schools, n.d.).
TRIO Upward Bound Program and college-going culture. Because of their focus on creating college access and the college preparation services they provide their participants, the TRIO Upward Bound Programs serve to create a college-going culture in the lives of its participants. Upward Bound Programs either provide the college-going culture that may be missing in some participants’ schools, or reinforces the college-going cultures that may already exist in other schools. Upward Bound Programs also provide parental support and encourage parental involvement (Zulli, Frierson & Clayton, 1999).
This parental support and involvement can contribute to the building of college-going cultures in the homes of Upward Bound participants.
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Potential Significance of the Study
This critical qualitative research study uses the methodology of narrative inquiry to illuminate the practices of college-educated parents in educating their children and preparing them to successfully enter college and attain degrees. Because TRIO Upward
Bound Program participants were once first-generation college students who received the intervention of Upward Bound Program services and utilized those services to earn degrees of their own, they possess a unique lens. They are able to reflect on their experiences in the Upward Bound Program, while comparing and contrasting their experiences of being raised by parents without degrees to the way they raise their children now that they have attained baccalaureate degrees or higher. This information will help to cultivate an understanding of how their experiences helped them to create college-going cultures in their households for their own children.
Many educators have acknowledged the importance of creating college-going cultures within schools to increase college preparation and enrollment. However, the foundation of a student’s education is rooted in that student’s home and is strengthened by involved, dedicated parents (Zulli, Frierson & Clayton, 1998; Public Agenda, 2010;
Kiyama, 2011). This study provides insight on how TRIO Upward Bound Program alumni created college-going cultures within their own homes for their children, based on the influence of their Upward Bound experiences on their lives. It proves useful for current Upward Bound Program personnel in providing instruction and support to the parents of their current participants on how to create college-going cultures in their homes. This information gives those parents the tools necessary to support their children’s education process within the home. Outside of Upward Bound Programs, this
16 research is useful in creating curriculum and programming for parents who did not attend college, assisting them with creating a college-going culture in their households for their children potentially through educational groups and community-based organizations.
Theoretical Framework and General Research Questions
If a college education allows citizens of the United States to propel themselves up the socioeconomic ladder, and that upward mobility is contingent upon the capital children are handed down from their parents, how does a child develop the skills to move into the plane of higher education? A parent’s low education levels and limited professional experiences may limit the amounts of capital they are able to pass down to their children. How does that child gain the skills to navigate the transition from high school to college? Where do they learn the skills that will allow them to persist in college through to graduation?
According to Swartz (2013), Bourdieu wrote of four forms of generic capital: economic capital, which includes money and property; cultural capital, which signifies information, knowledge, and educational credentials; social capital, which is comprised of acquaintances and networks; and symbolic capital, which represents legitimation and prestige. Of particular interest for this study are cultural and social capitals. I also explore funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzalez, 1992; Kiyama, 2011) as an anti- deficit model alternative to Bourdieu’s forms of capital.
Cultural Capital
Bourdieu defines cultural capital as “the general cultural background, knowledge, disposition, and skills passed from one generation to the next” (MacLeod, 2009, p. 12).
The cultural background that is lauded as rich and intellectually significant in higher
17 education in the United States is that of the dominant culture, that dominant culture being
White American or Eurocentric and affluent (Center for the Study of White American
Culture, Inc., 2009). Therefore, while students who are racial and ethnic minorities are often rich in cultural capital as it pertains to their own cultures, they may be at a disadvantage in the area of cultural capital as it pertains to the dominant culture.
MacLeod (2009) says:
Children who read books, visit museums, attend concerts, and go to the theater
and cinema (or simply growth in families where these practices are prevalent)
acquire a familiarity with the dominant culture that the educational system
implicitly requires of its students for academic attainment (p. 12).
These types of activities contribute to the building of cultural capital in children that is valued by the dominant culture.
Students who are racial and ethnic minorities acquire the cultural background of their own race or ethnicity, and even social class, but because this is not that of the dominant culture, they are often considered deficient in the area of cultural capital as it pertains to the dominant culture. “The more cultural capital a student has, the greater the degree of psychosocial engagement, which in turn influences the degree of social integration, the level of the student's commitment to the institution, and ultimately to first-to-second-year persistence” (Lederman, 2013, p. 1). A lack of cultural capital can play a significant role in the poor enrollment, persistence, and graduation rates of first- generation college students, especially those belonging to racial and ethnic minority groups.
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Social Capital
“Social capital is the sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition” (Bourdieu &
Wacquant, 1992, p. 119). Social networks are composed of people and their connections.
Students with college-educated or professional parents often have the privilege of job- shadowing a parent on their job, or gaining a summer internship at their parents’ company or one of the companies of their parents’ peers. Those students’ parents, as college-educated professionals, have made the personal and professional connections necessary to ensure their son or daughter a richness of social capital. They then pass this social capital on to their child(ren). But what of those students whose parents are the non- college-educated working class?
Cultural and Social capital are tangible commodities that are passed from parent to child (Lee & Bowden, 2006). Parental cultural and social capitals are necessary to build a strong college-going culture in a student’s home. The experiences of the former first-generation TRIO Upward Bound Program participants who are now parenting continuing-generation students were examined through the lens of Bourdieu’s theories of cultural and social capital. Because college access programs such as the TRIO Upward
Bound Program serve to increase cultural and social capital in its students, learning of the experiences of program alumni is valuable in understanding how those experiences have shaped their parenting practices as they pertain to creating a college-going culture in their homes and influencing aspirations of college attendance in their children.
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Funds of Knowledge
Because Bourdieu and Wacquant’s (1992) cultural and social capital theories often present a deficit model when used as a theoretical framework through which to examine first-generation, low-income, and racial and ethnic minority student experiences,
I felt the need to explore an anti-deficit framework to balance the discussion of parental involvement as it relates to the parents of students from these groups in providing support to their children through their education process. Mims (1985), Zulli, Frierson, and
Clayton (1998), and Vega, Moore, and Miranda (2015), reported high levels of parental involvement and support for students who had aspirations of attending college, despite the parents not being college educated (I explore these empirical studies later in Chapter
2). Those parents were not empty bank accounts—they possessed assets that were valuable to their college-aspiring children.
While many anti-deficit models exist, funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff &
Gonzalez, 1992; Kiyama, 2011) is one explanation of the cultural and social capital parents, who may not be college educated, provide to their children. Developed as a counter-narrative to the deficit models generally assigned to the backgrounds of
Mexican-American students in the United States, funds of knowledge illuminate the skills and lessons these students learn in their homes, whose value is often overlooked because they are not valued by dominant, or White culture in the U.S. However, these learned skills enable these children to thrive and survive within the context of their own culture.
Funds of knowledge are historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and well-being
(Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzalez, 1992).
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The research questions my study examined were: What were the experiences of the alumni of the TRIO Upward Bound Program during their program participation? And in their perception, how did those experiences influence the creation (or not) of a college- going culture in their household for their own children? Upward Bound Program alumni who have earned a baccalaureate degree or higher, and are now parents to college- enrolled children or children who are college graduates were interviewed to discuss their perceptions of their experiences in the program. Using funds of knowledge and forms of capital as a theoretical framework, the study explored whether and how the program alumni felt the experiences provided by the TRIO Upward Bound Program built their cultural and social capital, and influenced how they reared their children in preparation for college matriculation.
Limitations
Because the study asked respondents, who may be middle-aged or older adults, to reflect on experiences they had during their adolescent years, a limitation of the study was the passage of time negatively affecting the recollection of the participants’ experiences while enrolled in the TRIO Upward Bound Program. Participant selection was a challenge, as study participants needed to meet specific criteria—they must have participated in a TRIO Upward Bound Program as a high school student, have earned a baccalaureate degree or higher, and have adult-aged children who are currently enrolled in college or have graduated from college. And while there were many Upward Bound
Program alumni who met those criteria, contacting them proved difficult because many current Upward Bound Directors were not connected with their program’s alumni.
Another limitation was transferability. There is no guarantee that the practices the
21 program alumni implemented as parents to build college-going cultures in their homes can be replicated to build college-going cultures in the homes of others.
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CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW
Overview
The body of literature that spoke to my research questions and informed this study centered on three overlapping themes: first-generation college students (e.g. Means &
Pyne, 2017 and Hébert, 2018), the TRIO Upward Bound Program (e.g. Myers & Schirm,
1997 and McClure & Child, 1998), and parental involvement in the education process
(e.g. Fan & Williams, 2010). To explore the building of a college-going culture in a student’s home, I investigated parental involvement in the education process and its impact on the student’s learning and achievement. I also examined the research on the
TRIO Upward Bound Program and its service to first-generation college students as it presents empirically in the literature because these programs work to create college-going cultures for students who would be the first in their families to attend college (Bonham,
2014).
I first explored first-generation college students’ success empirically in the literature as it pertains to their perceptions of campus support, and some of the factors that have played into their success to illuminate the lived experiences of this population of student. I then examined the TRIO Upward Bound Program in the literature to gain an understanding of the participant experience and how alumni of the program might have perceived their experiences while in the program. Next, I looked at what the research says about parental involvement generally, and then more specifically within the TRIO
Upward Bound Program, and finally how it plays a role in the collegiate experiences of
23 first-generation college students. Lastly, I examined recent research on college-going cultures in high schools, and in the home.
First-generation College Student Success
Being the first in their families to attend college, first-generation college students face a myriad of challenges as they attempt to navigate a collegiate landscape, which may be foreign and arduous. Many studies have been conducted on first-generation college students and the challenges they face while matriculating in college. I would like to focus on the aspects that have worked to contribute to their successes by exploring two recent studies. Means and Pyne (2017) investigated the experiences of first-generation college students by exploring their sense of belonging, or how they were able to connect with their campus community and how they engaged on their campuses to feel valued and supported. Hébert (2018) focused on the experiences of high achieving first-generation college students to learn what practices contributed to their success in college. Both studies illuminate how first-generation college students are able to draw from the support that their parents are capable of providing, despite their limited educational experiences, and share the commonality of finding support from other on-campus sources such as mentors, student organizations, and academic and social support offices.
Means and Pyne (2017) examined first-generation, low-income students’ perceptions of institutional support, through Strayhorn’s (2012) Sense of Belonging conceptual framework. In their study, Means and Pyne shed light on how this population of students seeks out support in an effort to navigate their collegiate experiences.
Means and Pyne (2017) conducted three 60-90 minute interviews with 10 first- year, first-generation, low-income students from two cohort years who attended several
24 different colleges in the Southeast. They wanted to know “What are the institutional support structures identified by low-income, first-generation, first-year college students that increase sense of belonging and help them navigate their institutions?” (Means &
Pyne, 2017, p. 907). In the framework for their study, the researchers acknowledged the overarching presence of racism, classism, and sexism which exists within higher education institutions, and the fact that many first-generation, low-income students are members of marginalized and oppressed groups.
Means and Pyne (2017) found that the students in their study sought out and received support from multiple sources on campus. Some students expressed a sense of disconnectedness and invisibility due to feeling that their identities were not welcomed or recognized on their college campus. Based on feedback received from study participants, the researchers categorized the campus supports as social and academic spaces. Students articulated that student organizations were found to increase their sense of belonging within the institution. Students indicated that social identity centers, such as multicultural programming offices, decreased feelings of isolation for those who were members of marginalized or oppressed groups. Students who were a part of need-based scholarship programs stated that they found support within those programs, combating classism.
Students living in residence hall communities communicated that they were able to form close connections with other students within their living environment, giving them a sense of belonging. And on the academic side, students expressed that seeking out help from faculty members during office hours to get assistance in difficult courses provided support and motivation (Means & Pyne, 2017).
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Hébert (2018) examined the experiences of high-achieving first-generation, low- income college students to understand the psychological and social factors that have played into their success. He examined the home and community contexts and their influence on first-generation, low-income student achievement trajectories, how these students overcame socioeconomic challenges, and what relationships guided the behaviors, attitudes, and aspirations of these high-achieving students (Hébert, 2018).
Hébert’s study turns attention from the deficit model that is often applied to this population of students and focuses on the behaviors, attitudes and experiences that first- generation, low-income students exhibited to guide their academic success.
In his phenomenological research design, Hébert (2018) interviewed 10 full-time students at a state university in the Southeast enrolled in their third or final year in their degree program. Hébert solicited study participants by contacting the Office of
Undergraduate Research, the University Honors Program, and the TRIO Program Office.
Data was collected over three consecutive semesters through two-hour interviews with each participant.
Hébert (2018) found that study participants expressed benefiting from the support of K-12 educators while in high school, which set them up for success when they entered college. And although they indicated that they, like many students, had faced financial stress and adversity within their families while growing up and in high school, sustained family pride helped to keep them focused on their academic success. Some of the participants expressed receiving continual support and motivation from their parents and other family members regarding attending college—one stated he was told by his parents that attending college was his only option after high school. The participants stated that
26 they welcomed the academic rigor in college just as they had in high school. Mentors on both the high school and college levels provided support that contributed to their academic success.
Hébert (2018) acknowledged the parallel that exists between the students’ high school experience and their collegiate experience. Just as in high school, the study participants sought out intellectual engagement opportunities on the collegiate level as well. They shared about their involvement in Opportunity Scholars, undergraduate research, study abroad, and extracurricular involvement. The participants said that their families were highly encouraging and proud of their academic success in college, but some expressed that their parents were not able to provide specific advice or support, as they did not understand higher education. However, many of the students were able to find the higher education-specific advice and support needed through mentorship with faculty and staff members on campus.
Because the participants in my study were the first in their families to attend college, they may have faced similar challenges as those detailed empirically in the literature. And because they were successful in earning baccalaureate degrees, it was interesting to observe that some utilized similar channels as the participants in Means and
Pynes’ (2017) study to find the support and advice they needed to navigate their collegiate experiences, while some did things differently. Hébert (2018) discovered that many of his high-achieving first-generation study participants had benefitted from the support of their K-12 educators, and then sought out similar support on campus when they began their college matriculation. Of interest is the support the participants in my study received while in high school from Upward Bound Program personnel, which
27 influenced them in seeking similar types of support once they got to college. Also of interest is how the experiences Upward Bound Program alumni had in high school and college influenced how they parented their own children as it relates to college preparation.
TRIO Upward Bound Program
My study investigated whether and how alumni of the TRIO Upward Bound
Program used the experiences they had during their time in Upward Bound to create a college-going culture in their homes for their own children. To understand how program alumni perceived their experiences in the TRIO Upward Bound Program and the impact their participation in the program had on their lives, one must first examine the Upward
Bound Program services and participant experiences as documented empirically in the literature. This sheds light on various aspects of the Upward Bound Program that are consistent elements of the Upward Bound experience, regardless of geographic location, host institution, or demographic characteristics of current or past participants.
In their report, Myers and Schirm (1997) outlined the short-term impact of
Upward Bound on participants during their first and second years of high school. They wanted to examine how long, on average, students stayed in the program and what were the reasons for student attrition from the program. They also sought to explore the kinds of services students received from the program, the impact of Upward Bound on the participants’ education-related outcomes, and if some students benefited more than others from participation in Upward Bound.
Myers and Schirm (1997) surveyed 250 Upward Bound Program directors, conducted 20 detailed field visits, and surveyed over 700 Upward Bound target high
28 schools. As Upward Bound students were recruited to the programs in 1992-1994, participants completed baseline surveys. Follow-up questionnaires were distributed in spring and summer 1994, while another follow-up questionnaire was distributed in the summer of 1996. The researchers also gathered student high school and postsecondary transcripts. There were just over 2800 total participants in the study, with 1524 being
Upward Bound students and 1320 being control group students (Myers & Schirm, 1997).
Myers and Schrim’s (1997) findings suggested that the Upward Bound Program demonstrated early positive effects on student educational expectations and academic course-taking. Students who participated in Upward Bound expressed planning to complete more years of school than the control group. Parents of Upward Bound participants reported having expectations of their child completing more years of schooling than parents of students in the control group. Students enrolled in Upward
Bound earned more high school credits in their first two years of high school than those in the control group. The students who benefited the most from Upward Bound were those with the lowest educational expectations, and their participation in the program may have caused their parents’ educational expectations of them to rise (Myers &
Schirm, 1997). This demonstrates that a child’s participation in an Upward Bound
Program can also have an impact on a parent’s perception of their child’s potential.
Hispanic students tended to benefit the most early on and earn more high school credits than all other racial and ethnicity groups. The study did reveal, however, that nearly 40% of students who enter Upward Bound leave within the first year (Myers & Schirm, 1997).
McClure and Child (1998) compared Upward Bound students who had completed the ACT college entrance exam with non-Upward Bound participants who had also taken
29 the exam, were also college-bound, and graduating in the high school class of 1998. They looked at the demographic characteristics of both groups, their highest educational aspirations and expected first year grade point averages. They also examined the areas in which both groups planned to major, how likely each group would be to apply for financial aid, family incomes, and the percentage of each group who took ‘core’ classes:
English, Math, Social Studies, and a foreign language. McClure and Child (1998) used
1997-1998 ACT assessment data for 2538 Upward Bound students nationally, compared to data from 997,069 ACT tested non-Upward Bound students who were all a part of the
1998 graduating class.
The Upward Bound group was found to have a larger number of females and four times more African-American and Native American students, as well as twice as many
Hispanics. Slightly more Upward Bound students expected to apply for financial aid than the control group, as they were more likely to be in lower income brackets (this is in line with the low-income, first-generation eligibility requirements of the Upward Bound
Program). Upward Bound students’ college and career aspirations were just as high as non-participants, but Upward Bound participants were more likely to be ‘very sure’ of their intended major, and more likely to aspire to pursue a professional level degree
(McClure & Child, 1998).
Because students with higher levels of resilience are more likely to persist through high school and enroll in college, Lee (2009) examined the relationship between resilience and the academic achievement of at-risk students in Upward Bound Programs in the State of Georgia. Based on data collected from The Healthy Kids Survey for
WestEd on resilience (Constantine, Bernard & Diaz, 1999), Lee’s quantitative study used
30 descriptive statistics and a Pearson’s r correlation to investigate the extent to which first- generation, low-income high school students enrolled in Upward Bound programs in both urban and rural settings in Georgia demonstrated resilience as it related to academic achievement. The students were selected via purposeful sampling from seven different
Upward Bound programs (Lee, 2009).
Lee (2009) found that the Georgian Upward Bound participants were highly resilient which was positively related to their grade point averages. Urban participants exhibited only slightly higher resilience than rural participants, and females were more resilient than males. Lee (2009) concluded that the Upward Bound Program helps to build a student’s resilience, and positively impacts a student’s grade point average. The findings of Lee’s study suggested that resilience is key for maintaining good grades, fostering aspirations of degree attainment, and should be promoted for at-risk students, especially African American males (Lee, 2009).
The services provided by the Upward Bound Program (e.g. academic advising, ongoing support and motivation, college entrance exam preparation, exposure to college campuses, assistance with the college application and financial aid application process, encouraging students to take more challenging courses in high school, influencing higher college and career aspirations, and assistance in selecting a college major) are designed specifically to prepare students for postsecondary enrollment and to aid in the transition from high school to college. The program also provides students with services to help them build the skills they will need to persist through to degree attainment. Of importance in examining the TRIO Upward Bound Program is the exploration of the participant experience.
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Upward Bound Program Participant Experiences
Although the Upward Bound Program participant experience can be extremely subjective, and possibly influenced by student demographics, geographical location, or type of host institution (e.g. two-year community college, four-year university, community based organization, rural, urban), there are many parts of the Upward Bound experience that are the hallmarks of the program. This section will detail several qualitative studies that speak to the heart of the Upward Bound experience in which the majority of participants will engage.
Dansby and Dansby-Giles (2011) conducted a qualitative case study to investigate the perceived influence of academic factors, extracurricular experiences, behavior patterns, attendance tendencies, and school practices on whether or not a first-generation, low-income high school student persists through to high school graduation. Because
Upward Bound Programs specifically serve first-generation, low-income high school students, the researchers also examined the influence of participation in Upward Bound on high school graduation rates.
Their population consisted of 22 Upward Bound participants who had graduated with the class of 2011 and were now participants in the Upward Bound Bridge Program.
The Upward Bound Bridge Program is a unique opportunity for Upward Bound participants to take college courses for credit while receiving support from their Upward
Bound Program staff the summer before they begin their first year of college (Dansby &
Dansby-Giles, 2011). All of the Upward Bound Bridge students in the study were 18 years of age or older.
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Dansby and Dansby-Giles (2011) found that the Upward Bound students recognized that the mission of the program was to prepare them to successfully complete high school and attain a college degree. In the study, students described advantages they felt they had over their non-Upward Bound participant peers. The students expressed that the Upward Bound Program helped them to realize the unique opportunity of potentially being the first in their families to attend college. Because of this, they aspired to achieve more by earning ‘distinguished’ high school diplomas, rather than regular diplomas. The participants in the study indicated that they had been highly involved in extracurricular activities and that they were encouraged and supported by the Upward Bound staff to do so. And although these students all knew at least one person who had dropped out of high school, they reported that they themselves had never desired to do so, for fear of being unenrolled from the Upward Bound Program (Dansby & Dansby-Giles, 2011). Dansby and Dansby-Giles’ (2011) findings suggested that the students felt a strong bond with the other participants in their Upward Bound Program, which carried over to their lives at their respective high schools—they often did things with their Upward Bound peers like hanging out, or eating together at the lunch table. The students participating in the study prevalently expressed that their Upward Bound Program had the cultural organization of a family and they appreciated that the program Director would advocate on their behalf at their target high schools. They stated that they wished their high schools could be more like Upward Bound (Dansby & Dansby-Giles, 2011).
According to the study’s findings, the participants communicated an appreciation of the academic support Upward Bound provided, which challenged them by offering rigorous curricula that assisted them with meeting their high school graduation
33 requirements (Dansby & Dansby-Giles, 2011). The participants expressed appreciating being surrounded by caring adults in Upward Bound, within a small, close-knit community, which allowed them to get to know the faculty and staff, and vice versa. The students stated that they received social support by meeting other students within their
Upward Bound Program with similar college and career aspirations. The researchers found that the program provided a sense of stability and support, which some students were not able to experience in their homes (Dansby & Dansby-Giles, 2011).
To investigate if a sense of belonging to a community promotes academic and social growth, Saliwanchik-Brown (2005) conducted a study focused on the experiences of participants in a Maine Upward Bound Program during 2004. All of the participants were rising Juniors, Seniors, or Bridge students. The sample consisted of 37 Upward
Bound participants from 28 different Maine high schools, all within the ages of 15 and
18. Saliwanchik-Brown (2005) wanted to know if community size makes a difference, with smaller communities being better able to create and/or cultivate a sense of belonging, and if communities help students take more responsibility for their individual well-being (Saliwanchik-Brown, 2005). Saliwanchik-Brown conducted eight focus groups with five to eight students in each.
The relevant themes that emerged were interpersonal relationships, interacting with teachers, and being able to trust peer groups being necessary components for participants to feel a sense of community (Saliwanchik-Brown, 2005). Saliwanchik-
Brown discovered participants felt the most important component of community was relationships with adult members of that community. In the study, 89% of the respondents reported feeling no connection to their residential communities—some had
34 recently moved from other communities, moved between parents, from out-of-state, or had emigrated from other countries. Therefore, positive relationships with the Upward
Bound staff were the reasons the participants felt connected to their Upward Bound
Program (Saliwanchik-Brown, 2005). Other reasons the participants cited for feeling connected were their relationships with peers, emotional safety, and the positive impact the program had on their lives by raising their awareness of cultural and personal diversity (Saliwanchik-Brown, 2005). Participants also expressed appreciating assistance with selecting a college major, the college application process, and college campus visits, many of which their parents were unable to attend (Saliwanchik-Brown, 2005).
Grimard and Maddaus (2004) conducted a study on participants in a rural
Upward Bound program to gain a better understanding of the obstacles that low-income, rural youth face in accessing higher education and how an Upward Bound program serves to help them overcome those obstacles. Feedback was sought from program participants, parents and guidance counselors through three data collection phases— questionnaires completed by 53 students during the summer component of 2000, face-to- face interviews or small 2-3 student focus groups with nine randomly selected students, surveys administered to guidance counselors in Fall 2000, and finally, interviews with parents and guardians during Fall 2001 (Grimard & Maddaus, 2004).
Through their study, Grimard and Maddaus (2004) found that the main obstacles low-income rural students face to higher education enrollment and attainment were financial and social. The researchers discovered that the Upward Bound Program provided academic, social, and financial benefits to students. The students indicated that they enjoyed being on a college campus, and that exposure encouraged them to attend
35 college. The participants also expressed that Upward Bound also helped them improve their high school grades, which directly influenced their ability to get into college. The students stated that the program provided them with summer employment, allowing them to earn money to meet their needs, and they had the opportunity to meet new students—
86% indicated that they enjoyed meeting students that were not like them (Grimard &
Maddaus, 2004).
In the Grimard and Maddaus (2004) study, the parents of the Upward Bound participants indicated that they encouraged their children to continue to participate because they knew the program gave their child an advantage in getting into college.
Parents also stated that they saw how Upward Bound benefited their children socially by allowing them to meet new people—the program experience was preparing them socially to be able to interact with new people when they attended college (Grimard & Maddaus,
2004).
The aforementioned studies detail how the services the TRIO Upward Bound
Program provides impacted the lives of program participants. The program participants perceived that participation in the program increased their educational aspirations, encouraging them to pursue more years of college than before their participation (Myers
& Schirm, 1997; McClure & Child, 1998; Lee, 2009). Participants also expressed receiving assistance with homework, college major selection, and the college application and financial aid processes (McClure & Child, 1998; Saliwanchik-Brown, 2005; Grimard
& Maddaus, 2004). Research findings show that participants prevalently view Upward
Bound as a supportive community where students felt a family-like bond, felt emotionally safe, were exposed to being on a college campus, and were able to build their
36 social skills (Dansby & Dansby-Giles, 2011; Saliwanchik-Brown, 2005; Grimard &
Maddaus, 2004). Parents surveyed in the aforementioned studies discussed observing how the Upward Bound Program had benefited their children (Grimard & Maddaus,
2004). This influenced the parents to encourage their children to remain involved in the program. Next, I will explore parental involvement as it presents empirically in the literature, as well as how it relates specifically to the TRIO Upward Bound Program.
Parental Involvement
To gain a deeper understanding of how parents influence their children’s education process, we must examine the role parental involvement plays. Likewise, it is important to consider the role that parental support plays for students who are the first in their families to attend college, and how having parents who have not had a collegiate experience affects the amount of support first-generation college students might receive.
Also of importance to explore is the role of parental involvement in the education process of students who are participants in Upward Bound programs. Finally, I delve into the college-going culture as it presents empirically in the literature. Through parental involvement, parents communicate their educational expectations and aspirations for their children, influencing whether their children complete high school and enroll in college, regardless of the parents’ education level.
Parental involvement plays a pertinent role in the self-efficacy of high school students (Fan & Williams, 2010). Fan and Williams (2010) used 2002 Educational
Longitudinal Study data to investigate the effects of parental involvement on the academic self-efficacy of students in mathematics and English, engagement, and intrinsic motivation of tenth grade students in mathematics and English. They acknowledged
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Epstein’s (1995) work of creating a multidimensional framework for parental involvement, which included the following types of activities: parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision-making, and collaborating with the community.
Fan, in an earlier study (2001), was then the first to conduct empirical research to test theories on multidimensional facets of parental involvement and their effects on high school students.
In their 2010 study, Fan and Williams tested the following eight aspects of parental involvement: a) parent participation in extracurricular activities with kids, b) parental advising, c) parent–school communication concerning students’ school problems, d) school-initiated contact with parents, e) parent-initiated contact with school, f) parent participation in school functions, g) parental aspiration for students’ postsecondary education, and h) family rules. Fan and Williams (2010) conducted descriptive analyses and a series of five regression analyses on a sample size of 15,325 tenth graders nationally, using socioeconomic status as a control variable. Socioeconomic status was a composite variable made up of the following scores: The education levels of the students’ father/guardian, education level of the students’ mother/guardian, income, occupation of the father, and occupation of the mother. Parent reports in the ELS 2002 were used to compute the composite variables (Fan & Williams, 2010).
Fan and Williams (2010) found that school-initiated contact and parental aspirations for their students’ postsecondary expectations were positive predictors of student self-efficacy in mathematics and English. Students were more likely to feel engaged, supported, and motivated when they felt that their parents had high expectations and valued their education (Fan & Williams, 2010). Fan and Williams stated that parents
38 were able to communicate and convey their educational values and aspirations for their children through their parental involvement. Fan and Williams (2010) reported that this served as a motivation to their children to achieve academically. Parental involvement in their students’ extracurricular activities and participation in school functions also served as positive predictors for students’ self-efficacy in mathematics and English (Fan &
Williams, 2010). Parent-school communication regarding school problems was a strong negative predictor for both students’ self-efficacy in mathematics and English (Fan &
Williams, 2010).
Student engagement was positively predicted by all five composites of parental involvement: parent participation in extracurricular activities with student, school initiated contact about benign issues with parents, parental aspirations for student postsecondary education, and family rules for watching television. Parent-school communication concerning students’ school problems was once again, a strong negative indicator (Fan & Williams, 2010).
According to Fan and Williams (2010), student intrinsic motivation in mathematics and English were significantly affected by parental involvement. Of the 11 predictors, parental aspirations for postsecondary education, school initiated contact with parents regarding benign issues, parental advising, and family rules for watching television showed a positive influence on students’ English intrinsic motivation. Family rules regarding grade point average, parent participation in extracurricular activities with children, and school initiated contact with parents regarding school problems had negative effects on students’ intrinsic motivation in English. Of the components of parental involvement which were significant in predicting students’ intrinsic motivation
39 in mathematics, only parental aspirations for student postsecondary education, school- initiated contact with parents, and family rules for watching television were positive significant predictors, while parent-school communication concerning school problems was significant, but a negative indicator of students’ intrinsic motivation in mathematics.
As a result of their study, Fan and Williams (2010) concluded that communication about students’ poor school performance and negative behavior had strong negative associations with the study’s motivational outcomes, as opposed to communication about benign school issues. They were the first researchers to separate communication about school problems from communication about other benign issues. This allowed their study to fill a gap in the literature pertaining to the content of school communication with parents—the content of the school’s communication in school-parent contacts had a negative impact on students’ academic self-efficacy in mathematics and English, student engagement, and intrinsic motivation in mathematics and English (Fan & Williams,
2010).
In a replication and extension of Fan and Williams’ 2010 study, Ross (2016) explored the effects of parental involvement on high school completion and postsecondary attendance. Ross (2016) examined the same eight parental involvement variables that were also researched by Fan and Williams (2010). And like Fan and
Williams, Ross also utilized longitudinal ELS: 2002, following a cohort of students enrolled in tenth grade in 2002, through follow-up surveys in 2004, 2006, and 2012. She sought to investigate if the same dimensions of parental involvement from Fan and
Williams’ (2010) study that had an impact on high school students’ academic self-
40 efficacy, engagement, and intrinsic motivation in mathematics and English had a similar association with high school completion and postsecondary attendance (Ross, 2016).
Ross (2016) used sequential regression multivariate imputation (SRMI), which generated five sets of imputed data for the analysis. Using data for the entire cohort of sophomores in 2002, she then conducted logistic regression analyses to study the effects of parental involvement on both high school completion and postsecondary enrollment
(Ross, 2016). She found that by 2006, 88% of the students in the cohort had earned a high school diploma or GED and 71% had enrolled in college (Ross, 2016).
Ross (2016) found that high school graduation and college enrollment by 2006 had a moderate positive correlation to one another, positively influenced by parent participation in extracurricular activities and parent participation in school functions.
Ross also reported positive correlations between parental aspirations for their students’ postsecondary education and both high school completion and postsecondary enrollment.
She found that socioeconomic status was more positively correlated with postsecondary enrollment than high school graduation (Ross, 2016). And as with Fan and Williams’
(2010) study, parent-school communication concerning school problems was negatively correlated with both high school graduation and postsecondary attendance (Ross, 2016).
Through the use of logistic regression analysis, Ross (2016) found that high school completion by 2006 was significantly predicted by parental involvement, sex, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, while parents’ aspirations for their students’ postsecondary education demonstrated a positive influence on high school graduation.
Parent-school communications concerning students’ school problems and family rules for
41 doing household chores demonstrated negative effects on high school completion (Ross,
2016).
Ross (2016) also found that parental involvement, and student sex, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status were significant predictors for postsecondary attendance as well. As with high school completion, parent participation in school functions and parents’ aspirations for their children’s postsecondary education also positively influenced postsecondary enrollment (Ross, 2016). Unlike with high school completion, parent participation in extracurricular activities with their children was not a significant predictor of postsecondary attendance (Ross, 2016). There were more significantly negative predictors for postsecondary attendance than for high school completion, such as parent-school communication concerning students’ school problems, family rules for doing household chores, and family rules for watching television (Ross, 2016). Ross concluded that parents’ educational expectations for their children play a significant role in whether students complete high school and enroll in college, regardless of their background, while finding, as Fan and Williams (2010) did in their study, that parent- school communication concerning students’ school problem was consistently a negative influence on parental involvement (Ross, 2016).
Parental Support of First-Generation College Students
Because the parents of first-generation college students have not completed the first four years of the collegiate experience, the levels and depth of support they are able to provide their children may be varied and somewhat limited. Sy, Fong, Carter, Boehme and Alpert (2011) compared the levels of parent emotional and informational support, student stress, and the relationship between both types of support and students’ stress of
42 first-generation and continuing-generation college students during the month prior to entering college. They hypothesized that first-generation students would have higher levels of stress than their continuing-generation peers, the result of lower levels of parent emotional and informational support. They also predicted that both first-generation and continuing-generation students would experience lower levels of stress if they had higher levels of parent emotional and informational support.
Sy, et al. (2011) utilized a Likert questionnaire measuring levels of parental support and stress, which was administered to an ethnically diverse sample of 339 women on the verge of entering college at a large, public four-year university, of which the majority were 18 years old. Of the sample, 214 were continuing-generation students.
As predicted, first-generation students perceived less emotional and informational support than the continuing-generation students did. Those first-generation students who perceived higher levels of parent emotional and informational support, reported having lower levels of stress than those who did not have the parent emotional and informational support they felt was necessary. Of the two types of parental support assessed, neither significantly predicted stress levels for continuing-generation students. It could not be concluded that first-generation students experienced greater levels of stress during the college transition period than their continuing-generation peers (Sy, et al., 2011).
Austin (2011) investigated the extent to which families play a role in the educational goals of first-generation college students beyond the secondary level. He sought to understand how parents and families create an environment that leads to college attendance. How do parents of first-generation college students aid their children in
43 acquiring the cultural capital necessary to persist in college, and how do those students acquire this capital on their own (Austin, 2011)?
Austin (2011) conducted a case study, complete with in-depth interviews, observations, and document analysis. The study participants were students at the
University of Pittsburgh at Bradford and participants in the TRIO Student Support
Services Program. Like TRIO Upward Bound, Student Support Services is a federally funded program which provides support to first-generation, low-income students, but does this on the collegiate level, and includes service to students with disabilities (U.S.
Department of Education, 2017). Austin (2011) used non-probability sampling and received the assistance of the Program Director in selecting respondents. Ten students total participated. Each student was treated as a unique case study for the purpose of analysis and a grounded theory approach was utilized throughout data collection and analysis.
The participants in Austin’s (2011) study expressed feeling supported by their parents, but felt their parents were limited in their ability to provide direct academic support by their own limited educational backgrounds. The participants communicated that they were highly involved in extracurricular activities, which helped them connect with the social networks that developed the skills and dispositions to pursue a college education (Austin, 2011). It was expressed that their initial connections with these activities, which provided social and cultural capital growth opportunities were often encouraged by mentors, teachers, or faculty members, rather than their parents. Their involvement in these activities helped to build the capital necessary to connect them to their higher education aspirations. Participants expressed that their parents were not as
44 involved with their class selection in high school, or the college preparation and enrollment process as they would have liked (Austin, 2011).
Austin (2011) reported that the participants described having inherited their parents’ hard work ethic, which was a constant motivator to persist in their educational efforts despite adverse situations that had the potential to derail their pursuit of a degree.
They stated that their parents were of the belief that education was a way to increase socioeconomic status and pushed their children to pursue higher education. They expressed that their parents valued the educational process and desired that their children be successful. And when the students felt that their parents’ level of support was insufficient due to their limited education level, the students shared that they sought out other mentors who could provide the specific knowledge and support they deemed necessary.
College students are often adept enough to seek out the support they need to be successful in higher education, but are not able to receive from their parents. Hébert
(2018) detailed in his study that high-achieving, first-generation students had begun their involvement in intellectual engagement opportunities on the high school level with their high school faculty, guidance counselors, and mentors; and then continued that same behavior on the collegiate level. This contributed to their success as college students.
Austin (2011) points out that these types of engagement opportunities allow students to build the cultural and social capital (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) on their own, regardless of the levels their parents possess to pass on to them.
As presented in the literature, parental involvement is key to student success, conveying to students parental expectations around educational attainment. It has a direct
45 effect on high school graduation and college matriculation. Parents of first-generation college students are capable of providing support and motivation to their college-enrolled children, although they may not be able to provide specific advice due to their limited education levels. Next, I examine how parental involvement within the TRIO Upward
Bound presents empirically in the literature.
Parental Involvement and TRIO Upward Bound Program
Because my research study examined the messages about education that Upward
Bound Program alumni communicated to their own children during rearing, I believe it is important to also investigate parental involvement in the literature as it relates to the
TRIO Upward Bound Program. In a study involving 210 TRIO Upward Bound students across three different programs at three different institutions in the Northeast, Mims
(1985) sought to assess how aspiration, expectation, and parental influence manifested themselves among the participants. The program directors administered a questionnaire consisting of 20 items designed to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. The variable “aspiration” denoted the number of years of college the participants planned to pursue, while “expectation” was the job, career, or occupation the participant planned to pursue. These expectations were broken down into three levels—high aspirations
(professionals, owners, managers), medium (skilled workers, clerical, military, famers, craftsmen), and low (laborers, service workers, and unskilled workers). The variable
“parental influence” represented the level of support and assistance a parent or guardian provided to influence the student to pursue higher levels of achievement (Mims, 1985).
Of the participants who responded to the parental influences questions, 45.7 percent indicated that they were influenced by “significant others,” (i.e. teachers, friends,
46 guidance counselors), while 38.4 percent stated they were influenced by their parents.
Those who were influenced by their parents were likely to have only medium occupational aspirations and expectations (Mims, 1985). Considering that the Upward
Bound Program serves students whose parents did not earn a baccalaureate degree, there is the possibility that the parents’ ability to influence their children to pursue high aspiration occupations may have been limited by their own occupational and life experiences.
What do Upward Bound Program parents perceive to be the outcomes related to their children’s participation in the program, are there ways in which the parents feel they have benefited from the program, and how do they feel about their current level of involvement? These are the questions Zulli, Frierson, and Clayton (1998) sought to answer in their research study conducted with the University of North Carolina-Chapel
Hill Upward Bound Program parents.
Zulli, Frierson, and Clayton (1998) first formed a focus group made up of a non- random sample consisting of eight parents, one from each of the high schools the program targeted. The data collected from the focus group was then used to design a questionnaire that used both sentence completion questions and open-ended questions.
The parents were asked to describe changes they had observed in their child since they began their involvement in Upward Bound. Zulli, et. al. (1998) then used analytical deductions to identify patterns and trends in the data, and then extract themes.
Zulli, Frierson, and Clayton (1998), concluded that high parental involvement within the program was indicative of the program’s value to the parents because of its perceived benefits. Ninety percent of the parents indicated that their children had enrolled
47 in more challenging, college-track high school courses during their participation in
Upward Bound. Nearly 98 percent of the parents expressed seeing improvement in their children’s grades. Themes that emerged included parents having observed, in their children, more positive attitudes toward school and an understanding of the importance of education, as well as positive changes in behavior, morals and demeanor. Parents also perceived increases in self-confidence, motivation, maturity, responsibility, and independence (Zulli, et. al., 1998).
Parents not only perceived that their children overwhelmingly benefited from participation in the Upward Bound Program, they also expressed having themselves gained benefits from their children’s participation, such as assistance with supporting their children through the college preparation and application process (Zulli, Frierson &
Clayton, 1998). Parents detailed that the program brought them together with other parents whose students were enrolled in the program, allowing interactions with other parents who were dealing with similar circumstances and using those interactions to form a support system.
As part of a larger study investigating the educational experiences of students of color, Vega, Moore and Miranda (2015) sought to examine the perceptions of support identified by urban youth participating in the survey. The researchers explored sources of support to urban youth, who specifically provided the support, and the ways in which those persons provided those supports. The participants of the study were 20 students enrolled in urban high schools. Of the 20 study participants, 12 were Upward Bound
Program participants. Data were collected via biographical questionnaire, school district
48 data, and semi-structured interviews with individual students. The data were analyzed via grounded theory and constant comparative analysis (Vega, et. al., 2015).
Contrary to what is perceived about low-income and first-generation families,
Vega, Moore and Miranda (2015) found that families were highly involved in their students’ education process. All of the participants reported that their families helped them reach their goals through support and strong words of encouragement. However,
Vega, et. al. (2015) found that many participants did not feel they could receive homework help from parents due to low education levels, busy work schedules, and language barriers. The study participants lauded Upward Bound staff members for helping them reach their goals by providing the assistance with college access that their parents could not.
As mentioned in several of the studies reviewed, students who felt their parents had high expectations and high educational aspirations for them were more likely to strive to meet their parents’ expectations (Fan & Williams, 2010; Ross, 2016). Students also expressed that they were not always able to receive assistance from their parents with homework and college access information, but were able to receive that assistance from significant others, such as school officials and their Upward Bound Program staff
(Mims, 1985; Vega, Moore & Miranda, 2015). Parents in the Zulli, Frierson and Clayton
(1998) study reported receiving assistance in supporting their children through the college process from the Upward Bound Program, of which their children were a part.
College-Going Culture
As previously stated, a college-going culture is a culture in which the expectation of and motivation toward college attendance is promoted, encouraged, and continually
49 reinforced (Corwin & Tierney, 2007). The expectation of college matriculation is espoused within the belief systems of both the adults and students. As seen in the literature, college access programs, such as TRIO Upward Bound Programs, serve to create a college-going culture for their participants. Upward Bound Programs are just one way a student can be exposed to a college-going culture.
While many empirical studies explore the creation of college going-cultures in high schools (Holland & Farmer-Hinton, 2009; Robinson & Roksa, 2016; Welton &
Williams, 2007), there is a gap in the literature about the creation of college-going cultures in the home. My study adds to the literature by investigating whether and how
TRIO Upward Bound Program alumni used their experiences in the program where college-going cultures were created for them, to then create college-going cultures in their own homes.
Holland and Farmer-Hinton (2009) provided a contextual framework for creating a college culture within a high school, using district-wide data and self-reported data from high school seniors to examine the relationship between the students’ exposure to college culture and school size. Holland and Farmer-Hinton (2009) provide a definition of college culture:
College Culture reflects environments that are accessible to all students and
saturated with ever-present information and resources and on-going formal and
informal conversations that help students to understand the various facets of
preparing for, enrolling in, and graduating from postsecondary academic
institutions as those experiences specifically pertain to the students’ current and
future lives. (p. 26)
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Holland and Farmer-Hinton (2009) conducted their study in urban, public high schools in
Chicago. The researchers were interested in the extent to which students engaged in the college culture within their high school and if the size of the school had any bearing on their level of engagement.
Holland and Farmer-Hinton (2009) utilized district-wide survey data from the
Consortium on Chicago Schools Research’s (CCSR) Chicago Postsecondary Transition project. This data was compiled from survey data from 9723 of 16,374 Chicago Public high school seniors from 70 high schools. Six college support measures emerged from the data—College preparation activities, college talk, teacher advocacy, counselor advocacy, student counselor interactions, and hands-on support. Descriptive analyses, ANOVA, and correlations of school size and college support measures were computed.
Students in larger schools who were broken up into smaller learning communities reported greater involvement and access to college culture within their schools (Holland
& Farmer, 2009). These students reported having more in-depth conversations with school staff about college preparatory activities. They reported higher instances of interaction with school guidance counselors and more involvement in college planning activities. Based on these findings, the researchers advocated creating smaller learning communities within larger schools to better disseminate college access information to students, as well as ensuring that college access information is being evenly disseminated in smaller school buildings.
Robinson and Roksa (2016) examined the role of the high school guidance counselor in supporting students’ college-going. They wanted to know if seeing a guidance counselor for college information would increase a students’ chances of
51 enrolling in college, and if those chances differed by socioeconomic status, or across schools with differing levels of college-going culture. They used a national dataset from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002) to track the college enrollment of then tenth graders. The researchers utilized a two-level hierarchical linear model where level one predicted application to 2- and 4-year schools compared to having not applied at all; and level two included college-going culture and a range of school-level controls.
A multinomial logistic regression was performed.
Robinson and Roksa (2016) found that students who saw a guidance counselor in both their 10th and 12th grade years had an increase of 135% in the odds of applying to a 4- year school, while only seeing a guidance counselor in their last year increased those odds 67%. The researchers concluded that guidance counselors played a large role in encouraging students to apply to four-year institutions. They also found that the students who attended the high schools with a strong college-going culture were 2.4 times more likely to apply to four-year schools as opposed to not at all, while schools with a moderate college-going culture were only 1.6 times more likely (Robinson & Roksa,
2016).
Robinson and Roksa (2016) assert that environments need to be created within schools that normalize college degree attainment and create college-going cultures for first-generation, low-income and underrepresented student populations. Guidance counselors play a large role in influencing students to apply to college, but students in urban and poorer districts are less likely to have valuable interactions with guidance counselors due to high student-to-counselor ratios (Gagnon & Mattingly, 2016). This potentially hampers the college enrollment of students from these at-risk backgrounds.
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In their study, Welton and Williams (2007) analyzed the college-going culture within ‘Green High School,’ a high minority, high poverty Texas high school. They sought to examine how accountability and various socio-political structures impact the development of a high school’s college-going culture (Welton & Williams, 2007). In their critical ethnographic case study, the researchers used state education data and semi- structured interviews with a diverse representation of students and staff within the school building. They were able to uncover many of the factors in that school building that served as hindrances to creating a college-going culture within the building.
According to Welton and Williams (2007), state accountability was a major factor in the hindrance of creating a college-going culture in ‘Green High School.’ Students’ poor performance on state exit exams had forced the school curriculum toward test preparation, rather than instruction. This spawned a culture of test interventions, rather than instruction. The high rate of teacher turnover also contributed, as did the reduction in academic rigor. A culture of deficit perception and lower academic expectations of students also contributed. In addition, college access information was not distributed in a systematic way. Therefore, it did not evenly reach all students. Welton and Williams
(2007) state that this is a common scenario for high minority, high poverty schools.
Holland and Farmer-Hinton (2009), Robinson and Roksa (2016), and Welton and
Williams (2007) all investigated the elements of a college-going culture within high schools, as well as hindrances to creating that culture. Both Holland and Farmer-Hinton’s
(2009) and Robinson and Roksa’s (2016) studies stress the importance of the role of the high school guidance counselor in the lives of first-generation college students because of their parents’ limited college access knowledge. However, the student-to-guidance
53 counselor ratios in urban and poorer districts are often higher than recommended, limiting students’ interactions with guidance counselors and ultimately, their access to college access information (Gagnon & Mattingly, 2016; The College Board National
Office for School Counselor Advocacy, 2010; Dockery, 2012). Welton and Williams
(2007) detail the difficulties that a high school may face in creating a college-going culture within their building due to state testing mandates hindering instruction, high faculty turnover, and a culture of failure and low expectations. It is clear that a college- going culture can be hit or miss in some high schools, and not equally available to all students. Therefore, college-going cultures must be created within a student’s home to ensure that the expectation of college attendance is promoted and the support necessary to achieve it is present. Although the creating of college-going cultures in the home is lacking in the literature empirically, Kiyama (2011) investigated the phenomenon in the form of funds of knowledge that parents pass on to their children.
Kiyama (2011) examined funds of knowledge within Mexican-American family households and how those families’ funds of knowledge contribute to creating a college- going culture in the home. Kiyama (2011) collected data via semi-structured pre- and post- program interviews and oral history interviews. For the study, 27 interviews were conducted with parents whose children participated in six different Parent Outreach
Programs during Spring 2007. The Parent Outreach Program was run through a university outreach office at a large research I university in the southwestern U.S.
Students in the program were in grades K through five. The family units consisted of parents/guardians, children, siblings, extended family, and friends that lived in the child’s
54 household. Six families were interviewed in this qualitative multiple case study (Kiyama,
2011).
Kiyama (2011) found that educational information and practices already existed within many of the families’ funds of knowledge. However, they were not always recognized as such by parents and other family members. One mother commented about how her daughter regularly played math games on the household computer, yet mom did not connect that mundane, daily activity to the educational development or the development of positive college ideologies. The non-traditional education practices of families within underrepresented groups often go unrecognized because they do not directly mirror those practices valued by the dominant culture. Kiyama (2011) observed that social networks between different families were strong, and served as a vehicle to share college information from those who had attended college to those who had not, but had college-aspirations. Kiyama (2011) concluded that families are critical in the development of college-going cultures within the home. According to Kiyama (2011), recognition needs to be given to the fact that families have knowledge about education in general, but also about college specifically. The social networks that exist organically between these families can be used to disseminate college-going information (Kiyama,
2011).
After affirming the importance of exposure to a college-going culture for all students, especially first-generation, low-income students, and taking into consideration
Welton and Williams’ (2007) observations of the hindrances to creating those college- going cultures in schools that serve these populations of students, it only makes sense to conclude that college-going cultures must also be created within a student’s home. I have
55 observed gaps in the literature as it relates to college-going cultures being created in the homes of students. Funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzalez, 1992; Kiyama,
2011) passed down from parents to their children provide many of the skills and educational messages that children need to grow and survive on their own as functional adults, but how can those children receive messages that are also pertinent to college access and preparation when their parents did not attend college themselves? My study explored the messages that are passed down from parents to their children within a college-going culture in the child’s household by hearing from Upward Bound Program alumni—individuals who were raised by parents who had not attained at least a baccalaureate degree, received TRIO Upward Bound Program college access services in high school, and are now parenting, or have parented their own college-enrolled or college-graduate children.
Conclusion
Parental involvement in a student’s education process is at the foundation of creating a college-going culture in the home. College access programs, such as TRIO
Upward Bound create college-going cultures in the lives of students by sharpening academic skills and exposing students to college culture early on, impressing upon them that college is something that they can, and should strive toward. College-going cultures are also being created in high schools. However, if education begins in the home we, as educators, would be remiss if we did not advocate for creating college-going cultures within students’ homes as well. Parents have to be the architects in the building of those cultures in their homes.
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But how does a parent with limited levels of education create a college-going culture within their home when parenting a first-generation student? While these parents possess funds of knowledge and cultural and social capital that will give their children the skills necessary to guide them to becoming productive citizens of society, these funds of knowledge often lack college access and success tools such as advanced homework help, maneuvering the high school to college transition process (college applications, financial aid applications, campus visits, meeting deadlines, etc.), and navigating the collegiate landscape once enrolled in college. Parents of first-generation students often have high educational aspirations for their children, but they sometimes possess limitations in how they can help their children achieve those aspirations.
While creating college-going cultures in high schools is well documented within the literature (Holland & Farmer-Hinton, 2009; Robinson & Roksa, 2016; Welton &
Williams, 2007) a gap in the literature exists in creating college-going cultures in the student’s home. Exploring this phenomenon through the context of TRIO Upward Bound gives this topic an interesting dynamic. Upward Bound Program alumni are first- generation college students who were raised by parents who had not completed a baccalaureate degree. These alumni were able to relate to many of the experiences documented in the literature that are common to that population of students. However, they were also able to reflect on their experiences in Upward Bound and how those experiences shaped their college preparation and matriculation journey. And finally, they were able to share how they parented—the messages about college-going they conveyed to their children and the educational experiences to which they exposed them in creating a college-going culture in their own homes. The valuable knowledge captured from this
57 research study not only adds to the existing literature, but also informs practice in equipping and empowering parents in providing support to their first-generation students.
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CHAPTER 3 DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
Overall Approach and Rationale
To address my research questions and explore how TRIO Upward Bound
Program alumni used the experiences gained in the program to create college-going cultures in their homes for their children, my research study took the form of a critical qualitative research study (Guba & Lincoln, 1994; Kincheloe & McLaren, 2011). I used the methodology of narrative inquiry (Chase, 2018, Clandinin & Huber, 2010; Wells,
2011) to analyze the narratives of alumni of the TRIO Upward Bound Program to glean insight on if and how they, as first-generation college students, used the knowledge they gained while in Upward Bound about college-going in parenting their continuing generation children.
Critical Theory
Benton and Craib (2001) characterize the origins of critical theory as stemming from the relationship between science and agriculture—a societal shift in Europe toward capitalism where a dominant culture emerged due to wealth produced through agriculture and the use of science and technology. A group of social researchers and philosophers studying this phenomenon at The University of Frankfort in Germany later became known as the Frankfort School in 1923 (Antonio, 1983; Benton & Craib, 2001;
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Kincheloe & McLaren, 2011). Because of the strong Jewish membership within the
Frankfort School, many of those philosophers were exiled to the United States during the
Nazi takeover in 1933, later reassembling at Columbia University (Benton & Craib,
2001; Antonio, 1983). Among them were Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse, who challenged the traditional, widely accepted philosophies of Marx, Kant, Hegel, and
Weber (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2011). However, according to Antonio (1983), “critical theory” became a code word for Marxism during the American exile. Antonio (1983) denotes two types of Marxism—critical Marxism being present in his earlier works, while scientific Marxism represents an evolutionary shift away from “earlier Hegelian idealism” and toward a materialistic analysis of modes of production. According to this perspective, "’true’ Marxism is determinist, evolutionary, structuralist, and economist”
(Antonio, 1983, p. 327).
While the origins of critical theory in Germany focused mostly on economic inequalities and the creation of a dominant culture based on wealth, Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse were astonished to find that similar inequalities based on race, gender, and social class also existed in American culture (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2011). A while
Horkheimer and Adorno returned to Germany in 1953, Marcuse chose to remain in the
United States and later went on to become one of the foremost critical theorists of the
1960s, best known for his work with the student movements of the 1970s (Antonio, 1983;
Kincheloe & McLaren, 2011).
According to Guba and Lincoln (1994), critical theory dictates that:
A reality is assumed to be apprehendable that was once plastic, but that was, over
time, shaped by congeries of social, political, cultural, economic, ethnic, and
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gender factors, and then crystalized (reified) into a series of structures that are
now (inappropriately) taken as ‘real,’ that is, natural and immutable (p. 110).
Critical theory challenges what has long been accepted as the natural order of things, allowing us to explore the narrative from other angles and extract other themes and stories to round-out the true reality of a phenomenon. The epistemology is transactional and subjectivist—the investigator and investigated being interactively linked, the values of the investigator influencing the inquiry. The methodology is both dialogical and dialectic, meaning that the dialogue that takes place between the investigator and study participants has the potential to be transformative of structures once thought to be concrete (Guba & Lincoln, 1994).
Critical theory evolved from a criticism of economic disparities which created a dominant culture based on wealth (Antonio, 1983). Programs like TRIO Upward Bound exist for this very same reason. Just as critical theory illuminated social inequality based on wealth, TRIO Upward Bound Programs present one potential solution, leveling the playing field for children who are dealt a disparity, based on their parents’ limited education level. The popular, accepted narrative would insinuate that children who are raised by parents who did not attend college will grow up to become adults with limited education levels—parents are incapable of preparing their children for a life experience they have never experienced themselves. Critical theory allows us to examine such phenomena, challenge that narrative, and investigate alternative narratives to these phenomena, as well as how those narratives have come to be. Critical theory allows a researcher to flush out a counter-story to the popular narrative of a phenomenon, which
61 proved beneficial in the investigation of how TRIO Upward Bound Program alumni, who are now parenting their own children, created a college-going culture in their homes.
Narrative Inquiry
According to Connelly and Clandinin (1990), humans are storytellers by nature and lead storied lives. Therefore, it is natural that researchers can investigate phenomena based on the stories of people’s lived experiences. A narrative is a sequential story of events that convey meaning to a particular audience (Wells, 2011). Storytelling has been used across generations to record history and experiences to pass down culture and norms from one generation to the next. Originating in literature, narrative inquiry is now multidisciplinary, appearing in the social sciences and now characterizing what is known as ‘the narrative turn’ in the human sciences (Reissman, 2008). Since the study of narrative is the study of how people experience the world through storytelling, it is fitting that narrative inquiry is increasingly being used in the study of education and the lived experiences of students (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990).
Historical and philosophical foundations. Clandinin (2007) characterizes the move to narrative inquiry as the acceptance of detailed descriptions of lived experiences by research participants, or narrative, as credible research data. The move to narrative inquiry is described as being a set of four philosophical, non-chronological turns, or changes in direction from the way that researchers had previously thought about research, to thinking of it in a different way—a change in the relationship between the researcher and those being researched, a move from research data being simply numbers to more descriptive words, a push from the general to the more specific, and an acceptance of alternative epistemologies. In the first turn, the focus turns from the positivist, realistic
62 perspective defined by objectivity to a focus on interpretation and meaning (Clandinin,
2007). The researcher and participant are bound to one another in relationship. The researcher relies on the participant to tell their story, and the responsibility of interpretation of that story rests on the researcher (Clandinin, 2007).
Because numbers require the researcher to construct a narrative for their interpretation and often fail to represent the full meaning of a phenomenon, researchers began to explore words as data, promoting an interest in narrative inquiry (Clandinin,
2007). Words give a more descriptive account of human interaction and lived experiences than numbers. Qualitative research complements quantitative research by answering the question of ‘what?’ in the knowing process, then allowing the researcher to conceptualize the ‘how?’ (Wertz, Charmaz, McMullen, Josselson, Anderson &
McSpadden, 2011). Qualitative research gives us greater clarification in understanding specifically what the numbers reported from quantitative studies represent generally. And while quantitative researchers are often looking for study results that are generalizable to a population, qualitative researchers are looking for more specific results that characterize the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of the study participants around a specific phenomenon (Wertz, et. al., 2011). Quantitative research is most useful when variables are clearly defined and factual information is sought to address research questions or determine probability, whereas qualitative is the preferred research method when a researcher wishes to explore a phenomenon strictly from the perspective of the research participant (Hammarberg, Kirkman & Lacey, 2016).
Ontologically, qualitative inquiry allows a researcher to explore and report multiple perspectives and lived realities, while epistemologically, it dictates that there be
63 a close relationship between the researcher and study participant (Creswell, 2007). This characterizes the turn to narrative inquiry from the general to the more specific. Finally, the acceptance of other epistemologies in studying the social sciences beyond positivism opened the door for narrative inquiry. “The acceptance of the relational and interactive nature of human science research, the use of the story, and a focus on a careful accounting of the particular are hallmarks of knowing in narrative inquiry” (Clandinin,
2007, p. 25). Careful analysis of human experience shared through the telling of stories began to open the door to deeper, alternative ways of knowing and learning about those human experiences.
Purposes and characteristics of narrative inquiry. Narrative inquiry explores the commonplaces of temporality, sociality, and place within the respondents’ experiences, allowing a glimpse into the complexity and relational composition of their lived experiences (Clandinin & Huber, 2010). The commonplace of temporality deals with time. Time is on a continuum, however, most stories are told as narratives that happened in the past. Sociality is the social and personal conditions to which narrative inquirers have to attend. This deals not only with the feelings and moral dispositions of both the researcher and participants, but also cultural and social narratives, as well as the inquiry relationship between the researcher and participants (Clandinin & Huber, 2010). Place depicts the physical spaces that both the inquiry and events take place. What separates narrative inquiry from other methodologies is the addressing of all three commonplaces at once, allowing the researcher to thoroughly investigate the lived experiences of study participants (Clandinin & Huber, 2010).
Chase (2018) initially defined narrative inquiry as:
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A distinct form of communication, as ‘a retrospective meaning making—the
shaping or ordering of past experiences…a way of understanding one’s own and
others’ actions, of organizing events and objects into a meaningful whole, of
connecting and seeing the consequences of actions and events over time (Chase,
2005, p. 656).
As she wrote and reflected on the maturation of narrative inquiry, she then dropped the words “retrospective” and “past” from her definition as she came to the realization that events do not have to happen chronologically for the narrator to make meaning of their lived experiences (Chase, 2018).
Chase (2018) goes on to point out two major limitations of the concept of narrative. The first cautions against the use of the term narrative to “describe any account, object, or performance without explaining how it is narrative” (Chase, 2018, p. 548).
Using the term indiscriminately renders it meaningless (Chase, 2018). The second limitation by Chase seemingly contradicts Clandinin and Connelly’s (1990) view that humans are storytellers by nature who make meaning of our lives through storytelling.
Chase (2018) argues that this is too broad and sweeping. She states that “without a sense of the concept’s boundaries, non-narrative ways of communicating and meaning making are marginalized in our understanding of social life” (Chase, 2018, p. 548).
Ethics in narrative inquiry. Narrative inquiry presents several ethical considerations that need to be taken into account. Gottlieb and Lasser (2001) outline three ethical issues researchers should tend to. The first is to be cautious of privileging certain voices while muting others. Smythe and Murray (2000) caution that researchers need to protect participants who may not respond well to narrative inquiry due to fear of being
65 open and reflective about their experiences. To this point, Gottlieb and Lasser (2001) state that these muted voices may allow the voices that are more open to inquiry to be heard, thus limiting the voices being heard which may already be marginalized. Conflicts of interest may emerge where researchers favor their needs in completing their research project over selecting the best participants to illuminate the phenomenon being studied
(Gottlieb & Lasser, 2001). And finally, researchers should be trained in recognizing signs of distress in study participants, so as not to do harm (Gottlieb & Lasser, 2001).
Other ethical considerations include being aware of the relationship that exists between the researcher and participant. The researcher benefits from the participant sharing rich, deeply personal lived experiences, as this will give the researcher good data from which to explore their phenomenon. Therefore, the researcher must nurture the relationship so that the participant feels comfortable sharing and do no harm to the participant (Josselson, 2007). The researcher owns the interpretive process and must write about the data collected, the participants, and their experiences with great respect while protecting their anonymity, as they may read what has been written (Josselson,
2007). And because the researcher owns the interpretive process, the potential for bias exists in the researcher’s role of interpreter (Aarikka-Stenroos, 2010).
Research study methodology and rationale. Narrative inquiry was a fitting methodology for my study because it allowed me to investigate the lived experiences of
TRIO Upward Bound Program alumni who hold bachelor’s degrees or higher, and are now parents of currently enrolled college students or college graduates. Participants’ narratives of their lived experiences revealed valuable information, not only about their experiences as participants in Upward Bound, but also how those experiences impacted
66 their lives, and the lessons learned; and how, if at all, they passed those lessons on to their own children. Storytelling can lead to meaning-making. Participants’ narratives give us a glimpse into how lessons learned as high school students had a cross-generational educational effect. The data collected can be conveyed to others, detailing how the
Upward Bound Program alumni created college-going cultures in their homes based on their participation in a program that served to increase their cultural and social capital
(Cates & Schaefle, 2011). The parenting practices manifested in the data can be replicated by other parents, allowing them to provide the same levels of support to their children that college-educated parents provide to their own. My study goes beyond the quantitative results summarizing how many of the alumni of the TRIO Upward Bound
Program succeeded in meeting the objectives laid out by the U.S. Department of
Education. Instead, it delves into the whats, whys, and hows of their successes, failures, experiences, perspectives, and life lessons. It examines their multiple perspectives and lived realities as described by Creswell (2007), and sheds light on how those experiences shaped the way they prepared their children for college.
Study Participant Selection Criteria
To be included in the research study, participants had to meet the following criteria:
1) Be individuals who participated in a TRIO Upward Bound Program during
their high school years, which was hosted by an Ohio institution of higher
education and had a residential component to their summer program.
2) Have earned a baccalaureate degree or higher,
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3) Are now the parents of college-aged or older children who have enrolled in or
have graduated from college.
I limited my selection to alumni of TRIO Upward Bound Programs within the state of
Ohio hosted by institutions of higher education, which offered a residential component during their six-week intensive summer program. Upward Bound experiences can be quite subjective. All Upward Bound Programs have the same objectives they are obligated to meet. However, Upward Bound experiences can vary based on at which institution the program is hosted and the program’s leadership. I selected study participants who participated in an Upward Bound Program hosted by an institution of higher education within the State of Ohio that offered a residential component to increase the chances that the program alumni had as comparable an experience as possible, regardless of which program they participated.
The following nine TRIO Upward Bound Programs hosted by Ohio institutions of higher education have been in existence long enough to have alumni old enough to have college-aged or older children (year they were first funded is shown in parentheses):
Baldwin Wallace University (1968), Bowling Green State University (1965), Case
Western Reserve University (1966), Central State University (1966), Kent State
University (1971), University of Akron (1986), University of Cincinnati (1968),
University of Toledo (1965), and Wittenberg University (1966) (U.S. Department of
Education, 2015b; U.S. Department of Education, 2015c; U.S. Department of Education,
2016; U.S. Department of Education, 2018). I began by seeking study participants first from the following four programs: Wittenberg University, University of Cincinnati,
Baldwin Wallace, and Central State University. I am connected professionally to the
68 leadership and former leadership of these four programs, allowing easy access to former program participants.
Participant Selection and Recruitment
Participant selection took place via purposeful sampling and snowball sampling
(Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Patton, 2001). I worked through the channels mentioned earlier to identify participants who met the necessary criteria: participated in a TRIO Upward
Bound Program with a residential component at an Ohio institution of higher education, earned a baccalaureate degree or higher, and is now the parent of a child who enrolled in college or a child who is a college graduate.
First, I solicited names and contact information of Upward Bound Program alumni from the leadership of the aforementioned four programs. Upon receipt of the names and contact information, I emailed those program alumni to explain the purpose of my study, my participant selection criteria, and solicit a response as to whether they meet the criteria and would be interested in participating in my study.
Having worked previously for the Wittenberg University TRIO Upward Bound
Program for nearly ten years, I still have connections to the staff of that program. I also served on that program’s 50 Year Anniversary Reunion committee back in 2015 and
2016. With the permission of the former (now retired) Program Director, and the current
Director, I have access to contact information from program alumni who attended the 50
Year Anniversary reunion in July 2016, as well as contact information for alumni of the program who indicated interest in the reunion but were unable to attend. There was also a
Facebook group created to publicize the reunion and connect with the alumni of that
Program.
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Although the majority of my study participants are alumni of Wittenberg
University’s Upward Bound Program, my participant pool also included alumni from the following Upward Bound Programs: Baldwin Wallace University, Bowling Green State
University, and The University of Cincinnati. I utilized snowball sampling and was able to recruit a few more would-be study participants for a participant pool size of 14. The participant pool included eight females and six males.
Each program alum had a valuable perspective, which I was fortunate to capture, that tells the story of their Upward Bound Program experience and provides insight as to how that experience may have shaped their views on attaining a college education. It also sheds light on how they parent or parented their own children in terms of college access and college readiness. I had initially aimed to secure a participant pool size of ten to twelve respondents, with the understanding that the participant pool size would ultimately be determined by theoretical saturation, as described by Rudestam and Newton (2014):
“gathering data until no new relevant data are discovered regarding a category and until the categories are well developed and validated” (p. 108). My efforts yielded a participant pool size of 14.
Access, Role, Trust, and Rapport
During the summer of 2016, the Wittenberg University TRIO Upward Bound
Program celebrated their 50th year of service to the Springfield/Clark County, Ohio community. Since the summer of 1966, it is estimated that around 3000 students have participated in this particular Upward Bound Program throughout its existence (Turner,
2016). I served as the Assistant Director of this program for nine and a half years and have maintained connections with the program’s leadership since my departure.
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Because of my former role as an Assistant Director of the Wittenberg University
TRIO Upward Bound Program and my current role as a TRIO Upward Bound Program
Director, I have built a rapport and trust among current and former Upward Bound
Program participants, which was valuable in gaining access to program alumni for my research study. I also have access to the current and past leadership of other long-running
Upward Bound Programs in the state of Ohio including, The University of Cincinnati,
Baldwin Wallace University, and Central State University (of which I was a summer residential staff member as an undergraduate student) through our professional associations—Ohio TRIO and Educational Opportunity Association (formerly the Mid-
America Education Opportunity Program Personnel or MAEOPP). I was able to work with the directors of these long-running Upward Bound programs to identify eligible program alumni, and invite them to participate in the study.
Ethical and Political Considerations
I took great care to protect the identities of the study participants, and the confidentiality of what they shared with me via their interviews. Study participants who met the research study criteria were given an ‘Invitation to Participate in a Research
Study’ form (see Appendix A). This form detailed that study participation entailed participating in a 60-minute interview that asked them to recount their experiences in their upbringing as it pertains to their education process, their experiences in their
Upward Bound Program, and if and how those experiences had a bearing on how they parented their own children. It also stated that their study participation was voluntary, and that the participants were free to end their participation in the study at any time. Study participants were informed that they would receive no compensation for their
71 participation. Within the study, each participant was given an unidentifiable, fictitious name and their identity was protected. My contact information and contact information for the University of Dayton Institutional Review Board (IRB) was also included.
The necessary respect for persons (all participants were treated as autonomous agents, and those with diminished autonomy were protected), beneficence (the obligation to treat all participants ethically and to do no harm), and justice (that the burdens and benefits of research were evenly distributed), as described in the Belmont Report (Office for Human Research Protections, 2018), was utilized throughout the entire duration of the study. IRB approval was sought prior to the start of the research study to ensure that my institution was aware of the nature of the proposed study, and that none of the study participants would be harmed during the study.
Data Collection Methods
The method of data collection was semi-structured interviews. My interviewing methods were modeled after Holstein and Gubrium’s (1997) active interviewing. Active interviewing plays upon the link between investigator and investigated described by
Guba and Lincoln (1994), allowing the data to emerge from the co-constructed whats and hows, the two communicative contingencies guiding the subject behind the respondent
(Holstein & Gubrium, 1997). The whats relate to the subject and their responses being developed through the interpreted emerging data, while the hows represent a condition in which the data are constantly being developed throughout the entire interviewing process, with a constant relatedness being apparent between the whats and the hows (Holstein &
Gubrium, 1997). “The goal is to show how interview responses are produced in the interaction between interviewer and respondent, without losing sight of the meanings
72 produced or the circumstances that condition the meaning-making process” (Holstein &
Gubrium, 1997, p. 127). The focus is as much on the data gathering process, as it is on what data is been gathered.
I designed an interview protocol (see Appendix A), but sometimes asked questions not included in the protocol when necessary to get the participant to expound on information shared and draw out more detailed narratives. Interviews lasted, on average, about one hour in length. All of the interviews took place over the phone, as distance prevented face-to-face interviews. My protocol was divided into three themed sub-sections.
My first subset of questions focused on the participants’ childhood and upbringing. I sought to understand what attitudes about education were conveyed from their parents and family members and what the culture in their household was like as it pertained to education. I also sought to learn who the most influential individuals were in their lives in terms of educational aspirations and what experiences impacted their educational pursuits.
My next subset of questions inquired about their experiences in Upward Bound. I wanted to know what cultural experiences they had through the program, what college campuses they remember visiting, who were the Upward Bound staff members who influenced them most and why, and how their overall Upward Bound experience shaped their college and career aspirations. I wanted to know if their Upward Bound experiences helped to shape their college and career path and what life lessons they gained from those experiences that they took into their adult lives.
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My final subset of questions explored the participants’ parenting of their own children. Questions centered on the educational experiences they provided their children in their home, as well as educational experiences they sought for their children outside of the home. Also explored were their relationships with their children’s schools and school personnel; and their children’s college preparation experiences, including their high school to college transition, and the role they played in that transitional process. I examined how much of what they did in preparing their children for college was influenced by their experiences in Upward Bound, whose purpose was to prepare them for college.
I also keep a reflexive journal (see Appendix B) throughout the duration of my research study, as described by Guba and Lincoln (1985). It details my journey through this project as the researcher, allowing me to record and share my detailed thoughts and decisions made regarding methodologies, data collection, analyses, etc. It also provides another layer of transparency and trustworthiness in my research process. According to
Ortlipp (2008), the reflexive journal provides “a way of making my history, values, and assumptions open to scrutiny, not as an attempt to control bias, but to make it visible to the reader” (p. 698).
I followed the philosophy of Lieblich, as cited in Clandinin and Huber (2010)—I suspended my own beliefs so that I may be a non-judgmental, empathic listener. This is the place where a narrative inquirer moves beyond the ‘do no harm’ philosophy to a greater level of attentiveness to both the participants, their stories, and the research. I had my own preconceived notions and biases, which have been shaped by my own personal experiences and the work that I do professionally. However, I put them all aside so that
74 the stories of my study participants can be heard and recorded clearly, and the data collected could be meaningfully interpreted.
Data Analysis Procedures
I transcribed the interviews following data collection using a computer application called Descript.com for Mac. This allowed me to make notes regarding the interviews while they were still fresh in my mind. The computer software package, N*Vivo was used to code my data. N*Vivo was helpful in recognizing prevalent themes, commonalities, and dissimilarities among the participants’ experiences through coding
(see Appendix A for codes and coding screenshots).
Saldaña (2009) categorizes coding as First Cycle and Second Cycle coding, where
First Cycle coding is an initial coding process which is more generic in nature; and
Second Cycle coding allows a researcher to reorganize and re-categorize data to develop a coherent synthesis and explore deeper meaning within the data. While Saldaña (2009) describes First Cycle coding methods as “fairly simple and direct” (p. 45), he states that the researcher needs to have a good grasp on the First Cycle Coding process because the
Second Cycle coding process requires “such analytic skills as classifying, prioritizing, integrating, synthesizing, abstracting, conceptualizing, and theory building” (p. 45).
I began by using Descriptive Coding (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Saldana, 2003;
Wolcott, 1994 as cited in Saldaña, 2009) as an initial coding technique. Descriptive
Coding is an Elemental Method that uses phrases or words to represent basic topics that present in the data which can later be categorized for more detailed analysis (Saldaña,
2009). Elemental Methods, such as Descriptive Coding, are basic approaches to coding
75 which build a foundation for later coding cycles through the use of basic, yet focused coding filters (Saldaña, 2009).
Saldaña (2009) classifies Values Coding (Gables & Wolf, 1993; LeCompte &
Preissle, 1993, as cited in Saldaña, 2009) as one of the Affective Methods of coding
(Saldaña, 2009) because it “investigates subjective qualities of human experience by directly acknowledging and naming those experiences” (Saldaña, 2009, p. 86). I used
Values Coding to explore the study participants’ values, attitudes, and beliefs, allowing me to gain a better understanding of the values, attitudes, and beliefs they felt were necessary to pass on to their own children through childrearing. I, then performed what
Saldaña (2009) describes as Themeing the Data— “labeling the data and analyzing portions of it with an extended thematic statement rather than a shorter code” (p. 139).
This prepared me to move to Second Cycle coding.
Using Focused Coding (Charmaz, 2006 as cited in Saldaña, 2009) as my Second
Cycle coding method, I found the most frequent or significant categories to develop the major categories and themes present in my data (Saldaña, 2009). Crabtree and Miller
(1992, as cited in Creswell, 2007) describe a coding continuum that ranges from a priori codes—codes that a researcher expects to find based on the research questions and literature review—to emergent codes—new, possibly unexpected codes that present themselves during analysis. My coding practices fell in the middle of that continuum.
There were a priori codes that I expected to find due to the nature of the topics explored in my literature review. I expected to see a priori codes denoting prevalent themes as they relate to first-generation college students, the Upward Bound experience, and parental involvement as documented in the literature. These a priori codes illuminated
76 other aspects of these familiar themes. However, I kept my mind open to other emanating themes that surfaced through the analysis process. These emergent codes presented new themes, concepts, and ideas that surfaced as a result of my research, and are further detailed in the next chapter.
I began by coding my reflexive journal. Because I had been journaling all of my thoughts about the themes I saw emerging during the time I was interviewing and transcribing, I thought coding the reflexive journal first would be a good place to start in terms of First Cycle descriptive coding. Subsequently, I coded each of the interviews, first looking for those codes, and then identifying other themes that emerged and coded those as necessary. This set the stage for the use of Focused Coding for my Second Cycle coding technique during a second round of coding. A list of the codes that emerged can be found in Appendix A.
Procedures to Address Trustworthiness and Credibility
Lincoln and Guba (1985) outline four criteria to establish validity in qualitative research: Credibility, Transferability, Dependability, and Confirmability. Credibility will be supported through the use of triangulation. Semi-structured interviews and a reflexive journal were used as multiple sources of data collection. Peer debriefing was used to solicit feedback from other TRIO Upward Bound personnel who are practitioners.
Member checking was performed following interview transcription and composition of the narratives, allowing research participants to review data to ensure that I accurately captured their descriptions of their experiences. Transferability was addressed through the use of thick description, which would allow researchers to recreate my study, if so
77 desired. Confirmability was enhanced through my keeping of a reflexive journal, adding transparency to my research process.
Researcher Positionality
The intersectionality of my social identities drives my passion for the topic of this research study. As an African-American woman, I am painfully aware that both African-
Americans and women have been historically underrepresented in higher education. And while Whites have been building wealth for generations, African-Americans, many who were the descendants of slaves (self-included), have only had the opportunity to pursue higher education within the last three, maybe four generations. Higher education is one way of climbing the socioeconomic ladder in the United States, yet African-Americans were barred from the opportunity for many generations while Whites were able to actively partake in higher education, and climb the socioeconomic ladder, creating wealth for themselves and their descendants. And even today, disparities in urban public schools where the student populations are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic further exacerbate the achievement gap in education, creating haves and have-nots in college admissions and higher education opportunity (Kozol, 2005).
The work I do with Upward Bound is my way of positively impacting social justice and creating opportunity for students who would otherwise be lacking avenues to gain a college education; a way of sort of leveling the playing field. According to Myers and Schrim (1997), “Upward Bound students are disproportionately female and African-
American” (p.19). I see myself in many of the students whom I serve.
I am a TRIO Upward Bound Program professional with over thirteen years of experience in the field, a first-generation college student myself, and I am now the parent
78 of a continuing-generation high school student. I am hopeful that this research study will produce information that will be useful in informing my work as a TRIO Upward Bound
Program professional. Although I am quite happy with the opportunities I have been afforded and the path my life has taken thus far, I was not a participant of Upward Bound myself—I often wonder what direction my life would have taken had I have received the program’s services.
Professionally, I have spent the vast majority of my career creating college access for students belonging to populations traditionally underrepresented in higher education.
More than thirteen years of my professional career has been dedicated to specifically serving students through TRIO Programs. Upward Bound professionals have the unique challenge of running our programs according to federal regulations, developing relationships with the students we serve, as well as developing creative programming to meet the academic, personal, social and developmental needs of first-generation, low- income high school students. The potential of learning new ways to provide layers of support to Upward Bound students and other first-generation college students both excites and motivates me.
I acknowledge that there may be some bias in my views on TRIO Programs and
Upward Bound in general, growing out of my experience. As a TRIO professional, it is natural to believe that the work I do does make a positive impact on the students served.
More than 13 years working for TRIO Upward Bound has allowed me to see more than
100 first-generation, low-income students take advantage of Upward Bound services and go on to earn baccalaureate degrees, forging careers in Education, Medicine,
Engineering, Communications, Accounting, Information Technology, Supply Chain
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Management, and many other areas. Therefore, I will have to battle the assumption that participation in Upward Bound was beneficial for the students served.
As the parent of a continuing-generation student, I am interested in learning what information parents who have earned degrees share with their continuing-generation students to guide them toward higher education enrollment. What do they teach their children to influence them to get the most out of their collegiate experience, while motivating them toward persistence to baccalaureate graduation? As a parent who was once first-generation and is now parenting a continuing-generation student, I acknowledge that there are still areas within the college-going culture that are vague, or where I may lack knowledge. The intersectionality of my identity as a TRIO Upward
Bound Program professional and the parent of a continuing-generation student lent itself to creating a college-going culture in my home early on for my child. However, there may be areas within that college-going culture that are still lacking because I, as a parent am, in fact and will always be, first-generation myself. This research study serves to illuminate some of those areas, not only informing how I parent, but also how I educate as a college access practitioner.
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CHAPTER 4
STUDY PARTICIPANT NARRATIVES
Overview
Fourteen alumni from long-running Upward Bound Programs that were hosted by
Ohio colleges and universities that offered a residential component to their summer program were interviewed. The participating alumni are all now holders of baccalaureate or graduate degrees or higher, and are now the parents of college-enrolled, or college- graduated children. The study participants were involved in Upward Bound as early as the late 1960s, shortly after the time Upward Bound first came into existence in 1965, all the way up to as late as the early 1990s.
In this chapter, I will share the narratives I composed from the transcribed interviews of the fourteen study participants. Each study participant was given a fictitious name. I utilized member checking (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) to ensure that I correctly captured their stories. These narratives serve to tell the stories of the study participants, shedding light on their upbringing, their personal experiences in the Upward Bound
Program, and the paths their lives took following participation in Upward Bound. I also incorporate what they shared about their experiences as parents, and the key decisions they made about their children’s education. Because the participants’ enrollment in high school and participation in the Upward Bound Program spans several different decades, I will present their narratives grouped in three separate sections according to time period: the late 60s/early 70s, the late 70s/early 80s, and the late 80s/early 90s. I will then analyze how these stories speak to my research questions in the following chapter.
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Late 60s/Early 70s
The study participants who were enrolled in the Upward Bound Program during this time period were enrolled in the program early on in its existence. They were part of some of the first cohorts of students to have the Upward Bound experience. They also attended high school against the backdrop of the tail end of the Civil Rights movement.
They were in their 60s at the time of our interviews and either retired, or close to retirement age.
Brian Henderson
Brian Henderson, an African-American man, grew up in a section of Springfield,
Ohio called Needmore. Of Needmore he says, “now that I’m older I realized, we really didn’t need…we hardly needed anything. Because we had everything and didn’t realize it, but yet, we just didn’t have money.” He describes growing up in a close-knit community that was low-income, yet rich in neighborly support and connectedness. He is the middle child in a family of 11 kids. He was the family trailblazer—the first of all of his siblings to venture off to college. However, after he went, two additional younger siblings ventured off to college. An older sister first attended Upward Bound and then inspired him to get involved. He says:
My sister came back talking about how great this program was. Wow! So, I
joined. And when I got into Upward Bound, it was everything she’d said and
more! Eating all the food you wanted. Being able to have a room, you know…I’m
from a large family. You know it…being able to have a room to study in. That
was a luxury.
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Brian describes himself as having been an average student in high school who did the bare minimum. He credits Upward Bound with changing his perspective on the importance of academic achievement. Brian says:
Thank God for people like Mr. Cherry who stayed on my case and all our cases.
He stayed on my case because I was like the class clown. He used to shake his
head, I used to drive him so crazy because I was always up to something. But I
was a leader, but never looked at myself like that. That’s what bothered my school
teachers, and that’s what bothered some of my counselors at the time. They saw
that in me, but I just wasn’t ready to receive any of that. But ultimately, it
certainly worked to my benefit once I realized it.
He later realized that peers and younger guys in his community were looking up to him, viewing him as a role model because of his leadership abilities.
The expectation in his household was that they would all graduate from high school. His mother pushed that. However, attending college was nowhere on anyone’s radar until Brian, himself, pursued a higher education. For his father who had worked the cotton fields in Georgia, married his mother, and then migrated to Ohio for better opportunities, college was not an opportunity his parents had ever presented to him. Brian says Upward Bound planted that seed for him. He says of the Upward Bound staff:
People seeing things in you that you didn’t see in yourself. I would say that’s
what Upward Bound really did for me. It made me realize there’s more to life;
and keeping me on the path to discipline myself so I could ultimately better my
condition and my future.
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Of his Upward Bound Program experiences, he also talks of visiting Cleveland to see an O’Jays concert and their vehicle with all of their clothes in it being stolen.
“And…you know, what did we know about big city life? Counselors had took us here.
We went to the show and I remember it like yesterday. Came out and our car was gone.”
He remembers trips to other colleges more fondly, such as one they took to Ohio
Wesleyan University to compete against other Upward Bound Programs in baseball, basketball, and other sports. Because he had such positive experiences during his time in the program, Brian says he used to return from college during the summers to Upward
Bound at Wittenberg to work as a counselor.
Brian went on to pursue a degree in Economics at Florida A&M University, a historically Black university. It was rare at the time for students from Springfield to attend college so far away, especially African-American students. He says most of the students in Springfield who wanted to attend a historically Black college or university went to Central State University because of its close proximity to Springfield. Because of this, he has done many interviews for the local newspaper over the years on his career path and academic and life successes. He says that in one of those interviews, they once asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up. He said he wanted to own a Black bank. For a young African-American man who attended high school in the late 1960s, that seemed like a lofty goal. However, Brian has held many executive leadership positions in major, national banks. When he retired, he was the Vice President and
Regional Small Business Manager of a major national bank, overseeing 30 branch banks.
Even to this day, there are not many African-Americans in Vice President roles in banking, as he was during his 35-year career.
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When asked what motivated him to go into business and banking, he credits the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, who encouraged
Blacks to create their own banks and businesses in response to the discrimination they were experiencing, dealing with Whites in banking and business. Brian met his wife at
Florida A&M, where she was an Education major. Together, they chartered the first
Muslim group on campus, and started the first Mosque in Tallahassee. They went on to marry after graduation and had three children together, two sons and a daughter. All three of their children also attended Florida A&M, and their two sons have gone on to earn master's degrees.
Brian describes his experiences raising his children in Cleveland, Ohio. Of that experience he shares:
We’re not going to run from our community. We’re going to stay in our current
community and try to make the best of it. And we still live in the same place. Live
in a Black community. I don’t live in a poor community, but a Black community.
And my kids went to the public school system and they all did very well in the
major work program.
While their children were enrolled in school, Brian’s wife chose not to work outside the home while they were raising their kids, but volunteered much of her time to assisting their teachers in the school building. In our discussion together, he describes her as often being more dedicated than the teachers were. He says that teaching was just “in her blood,” coming from a long line of teachers, which included her mother, aunt, and sister.
After their children graduated from high school, Mrs. Henderson went on to teach for 25 years in the public school system. Brian credits her for raising the children right because
85 he felt as though he was always busy with his career. Even so, he mentions that he would see himself in family photos at all of their important family events, so he knows he was there, actively involved in his children’s lives.
Whereas going to college was not even a discussion being had in his household growing up, Brian says that going to college was a top priority for his children. When his sons decided that they, too, wanted to go into Business, Brian said there was no question as to where they were going to college. Florida A&M was the only option he gave his sons because of their powerful Business program, which now offered a program through which students could earn both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s in five years.
Now retired, Brian shares that he stills serves as a mentor to many people. He says:
That’s why I consider myself a life coach...Because I don’t just mentor young
men. I mentor people my kids’ age that are parents. I could be on this
phone...people call me all the time wanting to bend my ear. Because to me, when
we’re given a gift, a gift is given for us to share. When God gives us a gift, it’s to
share with others. What’s worse…it never was meant just for you anyway. He
gave it to you so you can pass it on to others. Each one teach one and it’s the gift
that keeps giving. And that’s my approach to it.
He also pens and publishes poetry in his spare time. Reflecting on his life’s accomplishments during the course of our conversation, he says:
And I’m sitting here talking to you about this stuff, I’m pinching myself, asking
myself ‘was this really me?’ All those times, until you talk about it, and then for
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12 years I haven’t had to talk about it a lot. But…you’re bringing it all out of
me…which proves that it’s all there. You can’t erase history—that’s what this is.
Reminiscing on his life’s accomplishments and experiences brings Brian to the realization that he has achieved far more than he ever thought possible in his lifetime. His contributions to his community throughout his life, both professionally and personally, have made powerful impacts for those who have been privileged to benefit.
Sophia Comer-Stiles
Sophia Comer-Stiles grew up on the edge of Springfield, Ohio. “We were kind of like farmers,” she says in reference to having lot of animals on their land. Having lost her mother at a very young age, she was raised by her father, along with her four siblings who were all older. She describes her father as a laborer with an elementary school education who made up for what he lacked in formal education with mother wit, or common sense. He, himself, was an avid reader who encouraged her to read as well. She says that he would regularly read the newspaper and tell her, “You have to know what’s going on in the world.” They did not have a lot of money, so Sophia found adventure in reading. Of her own love of reading while growing up, Sophia says:
I read everything. I read everything...An avid reader. I could spend hours and
hours reading and because of that my father would bring me home lots and lots of
books that he would get from the junkyard or any place he could find them...old
magazines. So I had lots of reading material. So like I said, I really enjoyed
reading a lot. And that was my escape. I could read and travel to Paris.
Even from an early age, Sophia realized that books could take her anywhere in the world from her small-town in Ohio.
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As an African-American woman, she described feeling somewhat alienated early on in school. A shy, creative child, she attended predominantly White schools until the
6th grade when she moved into the city, to the predominantly Black side of town. That is when she says school became fun. She met Brian Henderson, along with the rest of her lifelong friends when she started 6th grade in town. She had finally found camaraderie with other children who shared a similar racial identity. Of her old school on the edge of town, she said there were a total of five African-American students in her entire school building.
Sophia describes herself as an average student in school. Of her academic abilities, she says:
I knew I could...always had the capabilities, but you know, C is passing. C would
get you through without half the work. I'd never really studied because like I said,
I was a pretty good student, but I wasn't really a great student because I didn't
study at all. I didn't take any college prep classes until Upward Bound and then
they started me on a different track.
Upward Bound served as her introduction to higher academic achievement and taught her the importance of taking college preparatory courses.
Having heard about the Upward Bound Program at Wittenberg University from her cousin who had started the year before. Sophia says:
The first year that Upward Bound came to Wittenberg University, my cousin went
and she just told me how great it was and that it was a lot of fun. And you got to
go on field trips, and live in a dorm, and eat in the cafeteria, and all that. It just
sounded exciting.
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She says that she, Brian Henderson, and several other friends walked the short distance over to Wittenberg to find out how they could get into the program. During our discussion, Sophia says she and Brian still go back and forth about whether they were the inaugural class of the program—Brian says they were. She says they were the second class, or very close to the first.
Reminiscing on her experiences in the program, she talks about having attended an opera for the first time, as well as having taken a drama elective that allowed her to push the boundaries of her shyness. The Upward Bound students would present plays in the park for the Springfield community, and performing in front of people was something
Sophia had never imagined herself doing up to that point in her life. She also speaks of visiting other Upward Bound Programs on their college campuses for track meets and other competitions.
College had not been something Sophia had considered prior to her enrollment in
Upward Bound. She said that education was valued in her home growing up, but no one had pushed her toward pursuing a formal education. Although she says she has a couple of uncles and an older cousin with college degrees, she had thought she would always just work as a nursing assistant as her older sisters had done. She talks of how her mother’s sisters had all been stay-at-home moms who encouraged her and her sisters to pursue employment outside of their homes, and her grandfather’s sisters on her dad’s side who were all entrepreneurs, one owning a cafeteria, another an insurance company, while another did sewing and alterations. Yet, there were no pushes from family members to consider college as a viable option.
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Sophia talks fondly about being influenced by then Wittenberg University
Upward Bound Director, Bob Cherry, to pursue something more. And although Mr.
Cherry’s message about her ability to thrive in college was strong, it was not the only message she had heard. She says:
I remember telling a high school counselor that we had a lot of dogs. We had a lot
of dogs and cats. Everybody in my family had a pet...2 or 3 of them. And my dad
had three or four dogs, so I was always around a lot of dogs. When we were on
the farm, we had cows and pigs and chickens. And so I remember telling a
[school] counselor once that I was thinking about being a veterinarian. And I
remember him looking at me and telling me, ‘you need another thought because
that's never going to happen. You don't have the money, the grades. You're not in
college-prep classes or anything.’ So I think I took that as if to say, 'well maybe,
probably he's right about that.'
But Mr. Cherry’s message rang through louder. She continues:
So when Mr. Cherry said, well, ‘you could be a teacher.’ I said, ‘a teacher? But
don't you have to go to college for that?’ And that was the first that...I do
remember that being the first time of me thinking that maybe I could do this.
Maybe there was something to this.
Her experiences in Upward Bound were so powerful that she even came back for two summers during the time she was pursuing her bachelor's degree to work as a Bridge
Counselor for the program.
Mr. Cherry, being a graduate of The University of Akron, connected Sophia to the university to pursue a degree in Education. After teaching middle school math and
90 science for three years and then math on the junior college level for three more years, she became bored with it and returned to college to earn a master’s degree in Elementary
Curriculum. However, she then entered the business world and ran a distribution center for a large department store for three years. Following that, she returned to teaching for nine or ten years, and then returned to college and earned a degree in Library Science, ending her professional career as a librarian—fitting considering her lifelong love of reading!
At the time she began pursuing her degree in Library Science, she was the mother of two. Her youngest had just turned five and her oldest, seven. She said she attended classes on Saturdays, hiring a teenage girl to babysit while she was in class. At that time, her girls attended the school at which she was teaching, which was a predominantly
White school. When they entered middle school, Sophia wanted them to attend predominantly Black schools. The older daughter went into the neighborhood school, which was well rated, and the younger one went into a magnet school. She says that the teachers at the magnet school were all on point, but that she had to visit the neighborhood school several times to request that the teachers challenge her daughter more, as opposed to having her run errands for them during class time because she already knew all of the material. Both of her daughters attended magnet schools for high school. Sophia was extremely happy with the experiences her daughters had in the magnet high school. She says that both her daughters took honors classes in high school, and her younger daughter was dual enrolled and earned college credits in high school. While college was not on her own radar as a kid, Sophia says they knew their girls were going to college “from birth.”
She and her husband had purchased college savings plans for the girls.
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When I asked Sophia to reflect on how homework was handled in her household growing up, and how she handled homework for her children, she said:
For me, I don't think my father realized if I had homework, or not. My father was
a single man raising five children. And if you had food and clothes and shoes
and...I remember about the only thing he would ask me was if I needed any
books. ‘You need anything else to read?’ you know. ‘I passed so and so yesterday
and they got a whole bunch of books out there. You need me to ask them for
something?’
Raising her girls in the days before everyone had cell phones, Sophia set the expectation that before they could talk on the phone to their friends, all homework needed to be done.
She would take a message if friends called during homework time. Of herself she says:
I'm not a hovering mother, but don't mess up. That's all they needed to know. Just
don't mess up. Everything's cool. But you mess up, then we'll have to have
restrictions and such. But if there's no reason for that, there's no reason. So there
was never a reason. They both were good...School, and they just...They liked the
feeling they got of accomplishment.
And because her daughters got a strong sense of accomplishment from working hard and doing well in school, Sophia says she did not have to place a lot of restrictions on them.
She describes them as good, hardworking kids.
When I asked her about the difference in educational and extracurricular experiences she had growing up, versus those her daughters had, she says:
We were kind of on the poor side, so we didn't have a lot of money. So I do, and I
did encourage my girls to be involved in everything they thought they wanted to
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be involved in—all the clubs, go on every field trip...my youngest one, both of
them were in the marching band. My youngest one was a cheerleader and in
marching band in high school. I did encourage them because I wished that I could
have, but we didn't have that kind of money. You wouldn't pay it, you know, with
the rental for instruments and there was no money to go to the games. We went to
the game maybe once or twice a year. We just didn't have that kind of money.
Sophia’s upbringing, being one of five children raised by a single father after her mother passed away when she was only a year old, is a stark contrast to the upbringing that her daughters had. She describes her father as a hardworking man who provided for his family, but she did not enjoy the high level of extracurricular involvement that her daughters did.
Although Sophia attended the University of Akron, a predominantly White university, as an undergraduate, she says her experiences in graduate school at Virginia
State University, an HBCU, are what impressed her to influence her own daughters to attend HBCUs. Both attended HBCUs for college, one majoring in Elementary
Education, and the other, Animal Science. Sophia says that, as a teenager, she did not know enough about colleges to make a real informed decision about which one to attend herself. Therefore, she ended up at the University of Akron through Mr. Cherry’s connections. She recounts having taken her daughters on multiple HBCU college campus visits. Her youngest daughter’s receiving a full-ride scholarship to the school of her choice solidified her college selection decision, while her oldest daughter’s love for her new-found institution influenced her decision, even though the institution was private and her earned scholarship money did not cover the entire cost of attending. And while her
93 husband would have been content with both girls living at home and going to college,
Sophia pushed the college residential experience so that each girl could learn independence and the management of their time, finances, and relationships. In reference to managing relationships and discussion of her daughters potentially living at home during their college years she says jokingly, “And it's hard to do that when you have a
6'4" dad who looks mean.”
Sarah Eugene
“It’s never too late,” Sarah Eugene says in reference to life and degree attainment.
Her life is a true testament to that statement. The youngest of seven children, Sarah was raised in a two-parent home by a father who left school in the 8th grade to work the farm and a mother who walked nearly 10 miles one-way daily to attend school. When Sarah’s mother was a teenager, she took a job as a domestic in a White family’s home to cover the cost of her room and board in that home, which was closer to her school. This was a common practice for African-Americans to earn money during those times. Her mother received a high school education. During the time Sarah was growing up in her parents’ household, her father was working as a welder and also as a domestic. Sarah says that her older siblings also worked as domestics and they were all taught a strong work ethic by her parents. She says that although her father made very little money, he provided for his family. Due to the lack of educational opportunities for her parents and the strength of their work ethic, Sarah’s parents stressed the importance of receiving an education.
Sarah describes herself as a child who always possessed a love of writing. She reminisces fondly about going to the drugstore with her father and begging him to buy her rainbow tablets in which to write. She initially liked them for the pretty colors, but
94 they would later become the place where her she would record her thoughts as her imagination shaped her ideas. Her father pushed her older siblings to work as domestics to develop a strong work ethic within them, but Sarah rebelled against that as a teenager in the late 60s who had just begun to experience the liberation of Black empowerment.
She joined the Upward Bound Program the summer before her ninth-grade year.
She’s not quite sure how she heard about the program—if it were through school or through the grapevine of the community. However, she does remember hearing that you got to live on a college campus and get away from your parents, take college courses and earn credit, and go on lots of field trips. She couldn’t wait to get involved. Of Upward
Bound, she says:
And I remember Upward Bound really stressed, you know, us...Our performance
as far as academically and socially, you know. They wanted us to be well-rounded
in all areas. And we had to stay on campus during the week and you go home on
the weekends. I excelled in my English writing. I still have my journal from my
writing class.
She reminisces on the English and Science classes they took, as well as learning how to silk screen, having study hall with tutors, dance parties, and even competing against other
Upward Bound Programs in sports and academics at Ohio University. Sarah shares with me that she was dreadfully shy during that time, but because she wanted to excel, she extended herself and tried not to be so timid.
Sarah’s maternal and paternal grandmothers were both school teachers in one- room school houses. Her grandfather had been one of the first African-American graduates of Berea College in Berea, Kentucky. Her mother had been a part of the
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Central State University Mothers Club while her older siblings were attending there, and her older sister held the honor of being Miss Central State University. The expectations of Sarah were set very high.
When it came time for Sarah to select a college to attend, she rebelled against the family legacy of Central State University. Many of her older siblings and other family members had attended Central State. Therefore, she did not want to. Her parents allowed her to have her way and she enrolled at Wright State University. She quickly noticed that there were very few students who shared her African-American identity on campus and she reluctantly decided to enroll at Central State. The adjustment period was rough for her there, as she was a 17-year old first-year student who had been paired with a 25-year old roommate. Many of the other girls in her dorm were from large urban areas, whereas
Sarah came from a small town. She left Central State the Spring of her first year. Sarah then enrolled at a community college in her hometown and majored in computer science.
Before finishing her program of study, she met and married her husband who was in the military. She followed him overseas where they gave birth to their first daughter. She says:
And so I didn't go to college and during that time. I didn't finish college until I
was 40 years old. Fast forward...So at 40 they called me 'retread' at Central State
University. I came back to Central State after the first year. I got divorced and
ended up going back to Central State.
Sarah finally earned her degree later in life, giving credence to her statement of “It’s never too late.”
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Sarah is now a published author and the mother of three adult children. When her oldest started school, the family had moved back to the small community in Ohio where
Sarah had grown up. They initially put her daughter in a private Christian school. They wanted her to have an education based on Christian principles and ideals. However,
Sarah and her husband went through a divorce and she then had to put all three of her kids in public schools. Eventually, her oldest daughter attended the predominantly Black high school in town, while her two younger kids attended the predominantly White high school. Sarah says:
And I feel like my sons didn't get that whole experience on being Black, but they
got another education on how it is to be Black in a White world. And that plays
such a role in our education as we see today and what's going on right now in the
news.
Although the environments of each school were significantly different because of the racial composition of the student bodies at each, Sarah says that all three of her kids got excellent educations, regardless of which high school they attended.
Because Sarah had not yet earned her Bachelor’s degree when her kids entered high school, they were able to enroll in the same Upward Bound Program of which she had been a part. They got to benefit from the mentorship, campus residential experience, college visits, tutoring, and other services Upward Bound had to offer. Sarah says she offered homework help to her kids when she could, and when she couldn’t, she would find someone who had the knowledge to offer. And when it was time for them to enroll in college, Sarah’s family had established a scholarship fund for anyone in their family who
97 enrolled in college. The scholarship was in the amount of $500 and all of her children had the opportunity to benefit from it.
After her experiences attending a predominantly Black high school, it was only natural for Sarah’s oldest daughter to want to attend an HBCU. Sarah says her daughter has always wanted to be a teacher, and she has since earned her degree in education. The middle son had an interest in graphic design and initially went to Hampton University through the influence of an uncle who was an alumnus with strong ties there. Sarah’s middle son loved Hampton, but the university lacked the computers and software for him to pursue Graphic Design. After a year there, he told his mother he wanted to transfer.
Sarah was supportive but advised him to get everything lined up for his transfer, so as not to miss a beat in his schooling. He then transferred to a large public university and graduated from there. He now owns his own graphic design company. Her youngest son’s ultimate career aspiration was aeronautics but the high cost of programs in that field made it cost-prohibitive for the family to send him to college for that program of study.
He has attended several colleges, but has not found one that suits his needs. Just as it wasn’t too late for Sarah, it’s not too late for her youngest son to discover his passions and connect those to a vocation.
Janet Robinson
Dr. Janet Robinson’s mother always regretted that her father, Janet’s grandfather, had not allowed her to go to college. Janet’s mother had aspirations of becoming a journalist. However, back in those days, the general belief was that women did not need to go to college—and Janet’s grandfather supported that belief. Therefore, Janet’s mother always encouraged her four children to do as well as they possibly could in school. Janet
98 was the youngest of the four—the only girl. Her father passed away when she was just six months old, leaving her mother to raise the four children on her own. Because of this
Janet recalls spending lots of time at her grandmother’s house.
Having moved around quite a bit, Janet’s family settled in Springfield, Ohio around the time she entered the ninth grade. They settled on the South end of town, which was the lower socioeconomic side of town. Janet says that as a White girl, living in that area gave her first-hand witness to the some of the civil unrest that happened there during the end of the Civil Rights movement.
Janet had always had aspirations of attending college and at that time, Ohio offered a better public college system than the State of California, where she had lived prior. Even though she desired to attend college and had the high academic achievement that suggested she would do well there, she still had no knowledge of how she would get there or how she would pay for it. Upward Bound would bridge that gap for her.
Janet’s friend was enrolled in the Upward Bound Program at Wittenberg
University and thought she would do well in the program. Her friend told then Assistant
Director, Kent Rollins about Janet and he sought her out in school through the guidance counselor’s office. Being White and coming from a lower socioeconomic neighborhood,
Janet found that Upward Bound gave her the opportunity to interact with diverse groups of people. She describes the program as a respite from the racial turmoil and violence that was occurring in the city during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. She said the Upward Bound
Program leadership let the students know that violent behavior in the name of social protest would not be tolerated there. The program provided a safe space where students
99 could interact with one another, regardless of their racial identity, and feel respected and valued.
Janet says Upward Bound gave her a sense of confidence in herself—that despite the fact that she did not come from an affluent neighborhood, she could rise above that and accomplish something far greater than she had ever imagined possible. Of the support she received from the program, she says:
And you're scared to death on the inside and can't show it. And you're like 'what
am I doing, going off and doing something like this? But then, you have these
cheerleaders behind you, you know, who tell you that you can do it. And that you
were worth it. You were just as good as any of the other kids born and that kind of
stuff. So yeah...tremendous experience! I don't know that I would have pulled it
all together and have had the wherewithal to figure it out if I hadn't been involved
in the program.
Upward Bound gave her the guidance necessary to make going to college after high school a reality.
Janet went on to attend a small, private, liberal arts college in northwestern Ohio.
She describes becoming horribly ill during the time that she was supposed to take a visit to the college before enrolling, thus creating a situation where she would end up attending the college, sight unseen. She shares with me how she loaded up her car that
August of 1972 and drove off to a strange, new, unknown world. Most college students today will not even consider attending a college if they cannot first take a campus tour, but Janet took the plunge. Of her bravery, she says:
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I lived on the South end. So even then, it was not the best part of town. And
believing that you could really move yourself out of that was kind of scary
because I was going to go to a private college with all these rich kids.
But because her Upward Bound Director, Bob Cherry, and Kent Rollins, and her Upward
Bound Tutor-Counselors—her Upward Bound cheerleaders—told her it would be ok, she believed it. And she graduated and went on to a Master’s program in Maine where she earned a degree in Communications. She even went on to earn a Ph.D. in
Communications, as well. She currently holds a leadership role in a governmental agency, a role that allows her to provide service to others. Although this role was never a part of her plan, it seemingly speaks to the heart of who she is. Her work in service organizations way back in high school may have been the genesis of her ardor for this work.
Janet is now the married mom of two adult sons. She shares that when her sons were young, she and her husband did not want them to attend Springfield City Schools because of declining academic ratings. Therefore, they, as do many families who reach a higher level of affluence in Springfield, moved out of the city, and into “the county.”
They settled in a small community outside of Springfield. Janet recalls looking around at all of the other students at her sons’ elementary school orientation and remarking to her husband how White the student body was. She had desired that her sons have regular, meaningful interactions with diverse groups of people, as she had growing up. She says her focus when looking to purchase a house had been a neighborhood in a good school district with strong ratings. However, Janet and her husband had not put racial diversity into the equation at the time. She says that through their years of living in that
101 community, she has seen diverse families move into the community and is pleased to see the changes in her community.
While she expresses not having received much homework help growing up, Janet says she and her husband were able to offer homework help to their boys when they were growing up. Being a strong student, Janet was able to read the material and figure it out on her own. And when she couldn’t, she had teachers who would assist with tutoring. If her sons needed homework help beyond what she and her husband could provide, she was able to ask friends to come by who could help them. Often times it was simply a matter of re-wording things and her sons could pick it up easily.
Janet says they encouraged their sons to attend college, but felt that simply paying for college for them would have encouraged an entitlement mentality. She says:
Yes, we will help you and support you. But we are not giving you a free ride to
college. You have to do something to show us that that is something you're going
to be doing. So when my oldest son started applying to colleges, he applied and
got accepted at several. In fact, he even got a partial wrestling scholarship.
He then informed her and her husband that he was going to go to the Air Force and would utilize the Veterans Bill to cover the cost of his college tuition. He has since earned a both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree, and is currently working on a second Master’s.
Her younger son earned a full-ride scholarship to a 4-year private, liberal arts college, but has since left that program and gone on to attain a trade skill. He currently makes more money than many of his college graduate friends, with no student loan debt.
Janet says she has friends who are in their late 60s and early 70s who are still paying off parent loan debt for their kids’ college tuition. She says that she and her husband refused
102 to take on that level of debt for their children, as it would compromise their financial stability and livelihood.
The participants in the above narratives participated in Upward Bound when it was still a relatively new program, but credit the program as being the starting point of encouragement to believe they could achieve more than anyone in their families had up to that point. Some are at or nearing retirement so their narratives presented stories of robust, long-spanning professional careers. The children of these participants are also well into adulthood, allowing us to see the long-term outcomes of the parenting decisions pertaining to education made by the participants. The next section will detail the narratives of the study participants who were enrolled in Upward Bound during the late
70s and early 80s.
Late 70s/Early 80s
The study participants whose stories are shared in the next section participated in
Upward Bound after the program had been in existence roughly 10 to 15 years. Unlike the first section, not all of the participants detailed in this section grew up in Springfield,
Ohio. I am intentionally vague about the specific names of some of their communities in the interest of protecting their identities.
Angela Roe
Of her upbringing in Springfield, Ohio, Angela Roe, an African-American woman, says, “My parents divorced when I was 13 years old. Raised by my mom, a single parent, the expectation in our home was that we would all pursue a college degree or some type of trade school.” She wasn’t exactly sure of how she would get to college.
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She just knew the expectation was that she get there. She recounted that, when she was in the 10th grade:
I met a lady...teacher by the name of Donna Kay Tolliver and she was working
out to Upward Bound. And she asked me if I might be interested. She said it was
for first-generation students that wanted to go to college. And I was like 'Whoa!
This is the answer to how I'm going to get there!’
Upward Bound made college a reality for Angela, while providing many other benefits.
The immediate benefit of Upward Bound for Angela was freedom. Coming from a large family that resided in a three-bedroom house, Upward Bound meant sharing a bedroom with just one other person while living in the residence hall, not several people.
It also meant not having to babysit or cook. However, the long-term benefits far exceeded the immediate. She received guidance in a college-like environment where the expectations of her were set high. She also received motivational messages of being capable academically of attending college and being successful there. She even gained leadership skills and abilities through the program when she returned to work for the program as a Tutor-Counselor after her high school graduation.
Of her school experiences she says, “So, I did enjoy school. I was active. I did enjoy school. I think for the most part I always did really well. And I enjoyed reading, and reading was my favorite pastime.” She initially had aspirations of attending law school and studying International Law. This interest spanned from having been the child of a father who was active duty military, which afforded her and her family the opportunity to travel quite a bit prior to her parents’ divorce. She attended college out-of- state and her first semester grade point average was less than stellar. In subsequent
104 semesters, she painstakingly pulled a 1.25 g.p.a. up to 3.0 by her third year. However,
Angela ultimately ended up leaving that institution and returning home due to the inability to secure further funding for school.
After that, life just happened. Angela found a job and worked to pay off her student loans. She fell in love and married. She then decided that she needed to find a career where she would not have to look for new employment every six months. The high demand for qualified nurses led her to nursing school. When I asked if Upward Bound influenced her career choice at all, she replied:
Upward Bound didn't really influence my career path because I never imagined
that I would be a nurse. As I said earlier, I really thought I was going to be in the
judicial system. That's really where I was kind of heading initially. And I ended
up in Healthcare. In retrospect, I looked at where would I see some stability with
employment—where would there always be a need, that I would always be able to
fulfill a need. And so that's kind of why I gravitated to health care, and into
nursing.
Angela then returned to college to earn a bachelor's degree, a master’s, and then ultimately a certification as a nurse practitioner.
Today, Angela is the mother of three adult sons. When asked about the schools they attended, she says that she raised her children in Springfield, Ohio, where she had grown up. Her children initially attended their neighborhood schools in the City of
Springfield, but they then relocated to what is known as “The County.” Springfield is a small city situated in Clark County, and in the county are several surrounding communities with their own school districts. People move to the county for nicer housing
105 options and better school districts. Angela and her family took advantage of this opportunity. She says her oldest son came up in one of the county school systems, but then returned to Springfield City Schools for high school due to the lack of diversity in his county school system. Angela’s sons were all enrolled in high school in Springfield
City Schools when that district merged its two high schools, North and South High
Schools, into one high school in 2008, Springfield High. This was done to address the racial and socioeconomic disparities that existed between the two schools.
Throughout her sons’ time in school, Angela describes having regular contact with teachers and advocating on behalf of her sons’ education. She talks about one instance when a teacher complained that one of her sons was crawling around on the floor in kindergarten, disrupting the rest of the class. When she spoke to her son about it, he said he was bored. She asked the teacher if she was having a problem with her son’s school work. The teacher said “no.” Angela suggested the teacher pair him with a student who was struggling to grasp the material. This was the beginning of her son serving as a tutor to other students for years to come.
Angela says that her sons knew early on that the expectation was that they would attend college and graduate. She would equate the grades they received in school to the job they could attain:
I equate your grades right now to what you're going to earn for the rest of your
life. So you know, if you're coming in here with C's and D's and that's the best
that you can do, that's fine, but you're going to get real comfortable working at
Taco Bell. And you know, but if you are actually working up to your full
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potential, then the opportunity for you to be able to work in a meaningful job and
earn a lucrative salary greatly increases based upon your academic standing.
All three of her sons are now college graduates and two of them are currently pursuing advanced degrees, one a masters, and the other a Ph.D.
She believes that one major difference in how her sons were raised from the way she was raised was that her sons had both parents in the household, so there was always someone there ensuring they were doing homework. Her mother was a single mother who often worked long hours. And while the expectation with her mother was that the homework got done, she was not always there to ensure that it did. Angela applied to many colleges, and ultimately ended up following her cousin to school in Kentucky. Her sons’ college attendance decisions were directed by the fact that they were athletes being recruited to colleges to play sports.
Angela asserts one last encouraging thought:
And I say this to anybody that goes to school or college. When you start, put your
best foot forward and step because when you get to that point where you have a
little fall and you're giving that 100%, somebody is going to show you grace and
give you the benefit of the doubt.
Angela believes wholly in giving 100% in everything she does and is grateful for the grace she has received from others throughout her life.
Darryl Thompson
Darryl Thompson, now an attorney and minister, attended his neighborhood schools on the south end of Springfield, Ohio up until high school. The predominantly
White high school across town was trying to encourage more African-Americans to
107 attend school there. This presented the perfect opportunity for Darryl, an African-
American man, because he did not want to follow his older brother to high school. Of his older brother he says:
He was pretty much a scrapper, and I was the jokester, you know. I told jokes. I
had many friends and didn't fight. And he was a scrapper. And he actually could
scrap, but I didn't want to be little brother who might be caught up in one of those
scraps.
Darryl says that going across town to attend the predominantly White high school could not be called bussing, as we know it historically, because the district did not provide transportation to get across town to school. It was more of an “outreach” on behalf of the school district as an effort to desegregate the high schools.
He and his four brothers and sisters were raised by his parents in a three bedroom, one bathroom house. His father had served in the Air Force for about 10 years, but during
Darryl’s childhood, he worked at the Post Office and pastored a church about five blocks from their home. Darryl describes his father as a strict disciplinarian who stressed the importance of education, but only to a level that would make him and his siblings self- sufficient enough to move out on their own as young adults. He recalls spending about three to four nights a week in church with his family.
Darryl was labeled “The Brainiac” amongst his siblings because of his academic prowess and his love for reading. It is not a moniker he liked much, as he got picked on because of it, and he did not consider himself especially brilliant. He believes that some of his siblings were just as smart as him, if not more. He just loved to read. He says that his parents did not allow them to do much else, so he read. He describes himself as an
108 avid reader who still enjoys reading today. He also shares that his father used to make them read the dictionary and learn 10-15 new words a week. His father and uncles were accomplished high school athletes. Darryl recalls that their awards were still on display in the school trophy cases even when he was enrolled in high school. However, he and his siblings were not encouraged to pursue sports. They were encouraged to read books.
“I sort of knew I was going to school,” Darryl says when I ask if he had thought much about college before getting involved in Upward Bound. He says of his family:
They talked about it, sort of in a joking way. Although I think they were serious,
right? ‘He's not going to get his hands dirty. He's going to college. That boy...That
boy is not going to get his hands dirty.’ So that was pretty much a joke, but was
serious, you know. And I had, just a little bit, thought about it before Upward
Bound, but couldn't see that, not so much the post-high school education before
Upward Bound.
He began his participation in Upward Bound just after 8th grade when he connected with the late Shirley Ellis who was then the Assistant Director of the Wittenberg University
Upward Bound Program. He credits Ms. Ellis with recruiting him to the program.
He recalls enjoying Upward Bound during both the summer and the academic year. He enjoyed living on campus, the classes, and tutoring, but also the plays and operas. He also talks of traveling as far as Cincinnati and Cleveland to visit colleges and compete against other Upward Bound Programs in sports. He reminisces fondly about the
Upward Bound staff and teachers who worked with him while he was in the program. He shares:
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The teachers were, whether they were....it didn't matter what race they were. They
were some of the best people. Just genuine people who were interested in our
education and in our just...enrichment. I mean...it was such, for me, a contrast,
particularly from high school. Roughly, I had three teachers that stand out in my
three years in high school where I could point my finger at them and say they
cared about students in general, but certainly about African-Americans. And those
teachers—and so God bless them and God rest their souls—at Upward Bound
were awesome!
The effects of the Upward Bound Program and the people Darryl interacted with there still stick with him today: “They were like parents to us and they really were concerned.
These were...some of my most memorable moments during, like I said, 8th grade through graduating high school, were spent with my Upward Bound family.”
Darryl says that Upward Bound was that catalyst that jump-started his aspirations of attending college and instilled in him the belief that he could be successful in college.
“Upward Bound did it. It turned a switch on in my soul that, you know, I can do this and be very successful at it. And that was it, you know. My direction sort of changed at that point.” His experiences of being that first-generation trailblazer are very similar to what many experience as they step out on faith and bravery. He says:
So you haven't had anybody in your family who's paved the way. Nobody's talked
about it in your family. They're not sitting over applications. In fact, you know, I
remember filling out the application by myself. That's something different than
when my oldest went to school. But, yeah, it gave me that sense of you can, not
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only can you go, but you can be very successful at college among, you know, any
race of people. You can be very successful.
Darryl credits Upward Bound with giving him the skills to not only get to college, but to also be successful there.
His high school academic achievements earned him a nearly full-ride to college where he initially pursued a career in Accounting. However, when his scholarship program was discontinued, he asked his father for tuition money so he could finish. His father, who was both a postal worker and a church pastor did not have money for his tuition, and so Darryl had to leave school. Darryl then returned home and got a job at the
Post Office himself so he could afford his own college tuition. He finished his degree at a university closer to home. After graduation, he was recruited to work at several different companies, but settled at a private company in Michigan. Dissatisfaction with that job opened the door for him to return to academia, this time to attend law school. He is a practicing attorney today.
The move to Michigan had not been all bad, as he met his wife there and the first of his two daughters was born just after he graduated law school in the mid-90s. They had built a home in a subdivision in a small town west of Detroit after having been made to believe that the home was in a high-performing school district, only to find out that it was actually located in a lower rated district. This prompted their decision to enroll her in a Montessori school. After a disagreement with that school’s leadership, they placed her in the neighborhood schools that they had been initially hesitant about. She tested into gifted and talented courses and was introduced to a program called Yes for Prep. Darryl describes it as being somewhat like Upward Bound, in terms of being a college
111 preparatory program, but much more intense because the purpose of the program is to prepare students to enter competitive prep high schools that feed into the country’s more elite colleges and universities. He says his daughter tried to get out of the program many times, but he and his wife encouraged her to stick it out. Through this program, she was able to secure a space in an elite high school. Darryl jokes about the school’s high price of tuition, but he says he paid it. The program also enabled her to get accepted to colleges such as the University of Chicago, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, University of Michigan, some of which she received full-ride scholarships. However, when Harvard came knocking, that was the ultimate decision, even though Darryl would have to cover her tuition out-of-pocket. She has since earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard and is currently pursuing her master’s degree at Boston College in Psychology.
His younger daughter has struggled with some learning difficulties throughout elementary school and middle school. This caused them to explore alternative schooling options for her. They found an academy that Darryl and his wife are quite pleased with, as they have seen her progress by leaps and bounds. The extremely small class sizes and individualized attention their daughter enjoys in her school come with a price tag of
$26,000 a year. And while providing homework help for her used to be brutally painful for them both, this academy had made all the difference. She is currently an A student.
Darryl believes she will attend college and receive vocational training, but thinks it may be a good idea for her to start at a community college so they can provide continued support for her.
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Darryl acknowledges the large sums of money he and his wife have spent on their daughters’ educations. He sees these as small sacrifices in the grand scheme of his investments in the lives of his children. Of his own upbringing, he says:
My parents were looking for ‘where do I sign my name on this’ and ‘is this saying
that I'm going to send the school some money I don't have?’ That's where my
parents were—loving, but that's where they were. When they found out I had a
scholarship, they didn't have anything to do with it. You know, they didn't love
me any less, but they just...That wasn't what they were doing. They were raising
kids. My dad was pastoring a church, as well as working at the Post Office, you
know. If you get in school, it'll be by your own efforts.
His outlook on education is definitely different than his parents. But so is his socioeconomic status. Darryl describes having invested thousands of dollars into his daughters’ education before they even reached the collegiate level, whereas he describes his father as being working class and not being able to afford his college tuition.
Deborah “Dee Dee” Dennison
Deborah Dennison, or Dee Dee as she’s affectionately called, is the daughter of a stay-at-home mother and a father who was a firefighter. An African-American woman, she is one of four children who grew up in a two-parent household until her parents divorced around the time she was 12 years old. She says her mother did not graduate high school, but later returned to school to earn a GED. And her father served in the military before he began his firefighting career and earned an Associate’s degree later in life.
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Dee Dee describes herself as having been a good student in school who enjoyed all subjects, except for math. Of the educational messages she heard in her household growing up, she says:
Education was stressed, but it wasn't pushed like real hard. It was, ‘you got to do
something,’ but I do have a lot of educators in my family. So, I had an aunt,
which is my father’s only sister, who was an educator and my uncle, her husband,
had been in education all their lives. So they pushed education: ‘Girl you gotta get
a degree. You can better yourself.’ I grew up in the inner city. So it was more or
less, ‘to get out this inner city, you're going to have to do more than we did.’
And because of that, Dee Dee did. She got extra tutoring in math. She carried a 3.5 g.p.a. while also being a student-athlete who participated in track, cheerleading, and volleyball.
She was also a part of the student government and homecoming court. Because she had family members who talked up college, Dee Dee had some early perceptions of what she thought college would be like. She had been a great student in high school, so she thought college would have been a little easier, but she found her study skills to be lacking.
She began her participation in Upward Bound the summer after her freshman year of high school. She was extremely excited about Upward Bound, but her parents did not share her excitement initially. The campus that hosted her Upward Bound Program was a
30 minute drive outside of the city where she lived. And the Upward Bound students stayed on campus the entire six weeks during the summer program—there was no going back and forth. Of her parents’ reaction, Dee Dee states, “They said, ‘No way! I don't know these people...Take my daughter up the road for six weeks?!’ So they weren't comfortable with it.” The Upward Bound Director made a visit to her home to meet with
114 her mother to tell her more about the program and how it could benefit Dee Dee. After that visit, Dee Dee’s mother was sold. Upward Bound became her home away from home and the family she longed for after her parents divorced. She describes participating in
Upward Bound’s student government and all of the Upward Bound Olympics events except for swimming.
Dee Dee credits Upward Bound with building her leadership skills. She talks of the opportunities that Upward Bound afforded her to attend student leadership conferences and to volunteer in her community. Those are still facets of her life today.
She credits Upward Bound with helping to build her character into the person she is today. When asked if Upward Bound changed her perception of attending college, she states:
Well, once I was in Upward Bound, after the first year, going into my second year
of the program, it wasn’t an option. It was like ‘I can do this!’ They built our self-
esteem up so high to make us believe that we could do it. It didn't matter where
we came from. It didn't matter our circumstances. If we wanted to go, they were
going to help us get there by any means necessary. My perception totally changed
because, you know, I knew I was probably going to go, but being in Upward
Bound was like, ‘yeah, I can do this.’
Upward Bound gave her the confidence in herself to believe that she could pursue a college education and be successful.
Dee Dee attended college at the institution that hosted her Upward Bound
Program. While in college, she began working in the Upward Bound office as a student worker. She absolutely loved it, as she got a behind-the-scenes experience in the program
115 she had grown to love. A secretary position in the program became available and Dee
Dee got the position. She saw it as an opportunity to give back, but it actually began her
34-year career with the program. She currently serves as the Director of the same program that nurtured her in her teenage years.
She now goes into classrooms to recruit students to Upward Bound who are sitting in some of the same schools she attended when she was growing up. Of the recruitment experience she says:
I always say, Ieesha, that I'm a product of TRIO when I go to the schools and I do
my presentation. The kids just see me as a grown-up in a suit and they can't
identify with anything else. Then I share my little testimony about how I grew up
in the inner city and when I say where I grew up, they're like, ‘Oh my God! Are
you serious?’ ‘Yeah!’ And I tell them ‘and my mom and dad divorced when I was
12. And if I can do it, you certainly can do it.’ And I use my little elevator speech
to grab their attention. At the beginning of my presentation I will ask ‘how many
want to go to college?’ I'll get four or five hands and at the end, when they hear
my story, I'll say, ‘how many want to go to college?’ It's the whole classroom. But
I think they can identify—’Man, if she can do it and grew up in the inner city.
Shoot I can do it, too!’
Dee Dee is a walking testament to the success of TRIO Upward Bound and the impact it can have on a student’s life. Not only is she proof-positive that Upward Bound works, she is now impacting the lives of young people in the same way that the program impacted hers.
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Dee Dee is now married and the mother of two adult-aged kids—a daughter and a son. She talks of how she made the decision to send her daughter to private school for elementary school. Her faith and small class sizes led her to choose a Christian school for her daughter. She liked the fact that they taught Biblical principles. Her daughter attended there until the sixth grade. At that point, Dee Dee felt that her daughter had received an academic foundation that was firm enough for her to attend the local public school in their district. Her son attended the same Christian school his older sister had attended, but only for a few years. They were then able to get him into a public school with an A rating, although it was not in their district. Shortly after that, they moved out to the suburbs and both of her kids finished in the local schools there.
Both of Dee Dee’s kids were student athletes, but rather than getting involved in the sports boosters clubs, she chose to get involved in the PTA. She says that all the parents wanted to be involved in the sports boosters. The schools in their suburbs were predominantly White, and being African-American, Dee Dee felt that it was more important for her to be a part of the PTA so that she could be at the table where important decisions were being made that directly affected her son. She says:
I was in the PTA here from the time he was in Middle School. I didn't really do
elementary because everybody mingles and gets along, but I was actually noticing
they were starting to put my son in a cluster with other African-American students
that were there. I started noticing that they were putting the African-American
kids in clusters, same classes. So I had to get active when he was in junior high. I
jumped on the PTA.
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She’s also had to be a voice amongst the parents on the PTA when discussions have come up that compare the inner city schools to the suburbs. Because she’s had kids in both at one point, she was a very active voice:
I can recall in some meetings where other parents were trying to compare the
inner city schools with the suburban schools and I'd have to just bring it home and
say ‘Hey, we don't have access to all the technology that suburban schools have.
In some inner city schools, our students have to share textbooks. My daughter
didn’t bring home her textbook because somebody else might have had to use it.
Whereas out here, my son is bringing home a textbook every day. You guys got
the technology and the money. Inner city schools don't have the money.’ I wanted
my voice to be heard. That’s why I was active.
She even volunteered her time to proctor the ACT testing at the high school for four years.
Dee Dee says that for her kids, attending college is an expectation, not an option.
She stresses the fact that if they want to attain a lifestyle similar to what they’ve enjoyed growing up, they are going to have to go to college. But the message she gives is that they should not just stop at a Bachelor’s degree—they should aspire to earn a Master’s, or even a Ph.D. if they so desire. She shares that her daughter was born before she graduated college, so her daughter saw her going to school full-time, working full-time, and being a mother all at the same time.
Because her daughter has spent so much time at the university where Dee Dee worked while she was growing up, she had no intention of attending school there. Dee
Dee had started there herself, but ultimately earned her degree from a university in her
118 hometown. Dee Dee offered her daughter $10,000 for college. She had received some scholarship money, but it was spread out across many different institutions. Once she did the math, she realized that attending the school where her mother worked would be her best option, as she could take advantage of the dependent tuition benefit and still have much of the scholarship money to go toward other expenses. She has since earned both a
Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree.
Dee Dee’s son also attended the university where she worked, but that happened by executive decision, so to speak. He did not take the time to complete the scholarship applications as his older sister had. Therefore, he was told that was his only option. Dee
Dee’s dependent tuition benefit would cover tuition and fees, but he would be responsible for room and board. The cost of room and board was roughly $10,000. Dee Dee and her husband gave him $5000. They felt that if he had to work to pay the last $5000 himself, the investment in his own education would motivate him to work hard and achieve in college.
Bethany Martin
“Education was stressed. We were taught a work ethic. Basically the things that were stressed in our home were education and a good work ethic,” Bethany Martin says of her household growing up. An African-American woman, she was raised in a two- parent home along with her two older sisters and one younger brother. Her father had dropped out of high school at the end of his junior year, but later earned his GED, while her mother had started college, but left before completing. She later went back to college around the time Bethany was in high school. “One of their biggest things was education
119 was extremely important. They said that it was something no one could ever take away from you,” Bethany says she was told by her parents.
She describes herself as having been mathematically gifted in school. Therefore, she was not allowed to get anything in math below an A. In other classes, she could not get anything below a C. She says she did not take her academics seriously and did just enough to earn her C’s. Of her love for reading she says:
I was an avid reader. I want to say, probably about 10 [years old], I ordered the
Black Encyclopedia and had my parents pay for it. Because they had those things
in the magazines and I ordered it, signed it, and things started coming in. Well,
yeah...they didn't realize it would be as much later. By that time, they had almost
the full set.
Despite her love for reading, she says did not realize how important school was until she got to college. She was highly involved in high school, participating in track, band, orchestra, pep club, and drama.
Bethany got involved in Upward Bound in her Junior year of high school. She believes Deborah Dennison may have been the person who told her about the program.
She went part of one summer in the program and then did her full Bridge year summer.
Of her Upward Bound experiences, she reflects on attending student leadership conferences at the Abbey Resort in Fontana, Wisconsin. She says she learned to network.
One of the most influential experiences in her life was meeting professionals as a youth and hearing their stories, which were motivational for her. She says she kept in touch with some of those professionals for years and even got letters of recommendation from them. She speaks of the college visits they went on to colleges and universities like
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Oberlin, Wilberforce, Ohio State, and Georgetown. She also reminisces about attending the Upward Bound Olympics and competing there against other Upward Bound
Programs across the state.
Bethany then enrolled in the same university that hosted her Upward Bound
Program. She worked as a work-study student for the Program while in college, but made the decision to leave college before graduating. She had become bored with college and had some personal things going on in her life. During the time she was not in school, she volunteered, working for the Upward Bound Program as a tutor. Once she became a parent, because she had not yet earned her degree by the time her kids got to high school,
Bethany was able to enroll her first two children into Upward Bound. The motivation to return to college and complete her own degree came from feeling she needed to set the example for her kids. She initially returned to the Accounting degree program she had started, but changed her major to Psychology, as that was where her passions lay. She went on to earn a Master’s degree in Rehabilitation Counseling, and she currently works with teens.
Now the mother of three, Bethany describes the decision-making process of how she chose the schools her children attended. She says that she started the first two at a
Montessori school for elementary school because she wanted them to have every advantage. They then went on to public schools for junior high and high school. Her youngest did not attend the Montessori school. Bethany started her in a public school. At one point, when that school closed, Bethany shares that she got an apartment in the suburbs so that her daughter could attend a suburban school, as she did not like the school
121 her current district was trying to send her daughter to. She then went on to a public performing arts high school outside of their district and graduated from there.
Bethany says that her mother set the expectation that learning would continue through the summer months. This was a practice she would later use in her own parenting. Of the influence her mother had on her had on her growing up, and how that influence rubbed off on how she educated her own kids, she says:
My mother had school work for us throughout the summer, to keep our mind
going. We were required to read books and do math problems...word problems or
whatever. We just couldn't do nothing all summer. That just wasn't allowed. And,
that's what I did with my children.
She says she regularly visited her kids’ schools when they were growing up, so much so, one teacher asked her not to come so much. Of that situation she says:
Because I was up there quite frequently, I mean like maybe a couple of times a
week, she told me I needed to call ahead and schedule to come and get her
approval. I told her I do not call ahead and schedule for my children to come. I
will not call ahead to schedule to come myself. So, if you want my children here,
you're going to have to have me here, too. And that was how I did things. She
tried to complain, but the principal who had been one of my teachers when I was
in high school told her, ‘Um, no. You're not going to win this one, and we're just
going to allow it to happen.’ All of the other teachers appreciated me being at the
school.
Bethany was a regular, supportive presence at her children’s school.
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Bethany stresses knowing each of your children individually, as college is not for everyone, but each child needs to be nurtured in their own way toward being productive adults. Because her oldest child struggled with a learning disability, Bethany came up with creative ways to facilitate her learning:
Because my oldest daughter had a very hard time catching up in her earlier years
of school, a lot of our vacations...family vacations, the focus was on what she was
learning, or was about to learn. I would always get an idea of what they were
learning, what their focus was going to be on and we would do our monthly trip
going somewhere. We would go visit, so she could see what it was—she was a
hands-on learner. So I always tried to make things fun and in a learning
environment.
She says her two younger daughters shared her love of reading, while her oldest did not.
She noticed that her oldest would read magazines and short stories, but not longer novels.
Therefore, she would order magazines and lay them around the house. Her oldest would then pick up the magazines and read the articles and short stories. This is how Bethany facilitated a love of reading in her daughter who did not like to read.
When it came to the college selection process for her three children, Bethany says her oldest had aspirations of going to the military. To that end, she exposed her to people who had served in the military and military culture so that she would know what to expect. Because the plan was for her to enter the military, Bethany says she did not prepare her for college the way should would have had the plan had been to go to college.
At the last minute, her oldest decided she did not want to go to the military and would instead enroll in the local community college. She did not do very well because she was
123 ill-prepared. Bethany had wanted her middle daughter to go to Xavier University in New
Orleans because that was where she had earned her degree. However, at the last minute a friend talked her into going to school in Tallahassee instead. With the last minute changes came many mix-ups with financial aid and housing and all her college-going plans fell through. The youngest daughter had aspirations of attending Roosevelt in Chicago. When
Bethany asked her how much money Roosevelt was offering, her daughter did not know because she had not done her research on the financial aid Roosevelt would offer.
Bethany told her that it was between Xavier and Roosevelt—whoever offered her the most money would be where she went. That school ended up being Xavier. Bethany told her, "okay, you can either go to Xavier, or you pay yourself." Her youngest daughter has since graduated from Xavier University and is currently deciding what graduate program she would like to pursue.
Sonia Dixon
The youngest of five children, Sonia Dixon grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. While her older siblings had gone to their community schools, Sonia attended school during the time that Cleveland Public Schools were focusing on the desegregation of the schools in the district. As Sonia is African American, this led to her being bussed across town to a predominantly White high school. It was at that high school that she was introduced to the Upward Bound Program. Of Upward Bound serving the predominantly White high school she says:
But still as I think about it, maybe it still had a high poverty area, and I would not
have had the opportunity to be in Upward Bound if I had stayed in the community
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school. So that right there is very salient. So Upward Bound was introduced and I
took advantage of it from beginning to end.
And while she absolutely loved high school and knew she was being exposed to more opportunities than if she had gone to her community school, she often wonders if she would have had a more enriching experience having had the camaraderie of those in her neighborhood around school, especially around sports, as Sonia was a student-athlete.
Sonia describes a time when her mother had to advocate on her behalf at school because Sonia and her best friend (also an African American woman) were in a Physics class with six White males and one White female. Sonia and her friend wanted to drop the course because they were struggling. When her mother spoke with the teacher, she asked about the racial makeup of the class. The teacher could not see the significance of her mother’s observation, but she pointed out to him that those students regularly formed their own study groups and generally did not invite Sonia and her friend to join.
Therefore, they had no one, but each other in which to engage in peer learning situations.
The teacher then understood that the environment in the course had been somewhat alienating for the two girls and worked to encourage all the students to interact with one another. Neither girl dropped the course, and they both earned good grades in the course.
Sonia credits her mother with being the one with the eye for academic opportunities. Her mother was excited about her getting involved with Upward Bound.
And while her father wanted to see her have unique opportunities and to do well academically, he was not thrilled about her living away from home for six weeks in the summer. She got involved in the program in the 10th grade. Of her Upward Bound experience, she says, “The discipline, the work ethic, you know, those are the things that
125 you may have hated at that time, but it made all the difference in the future.” She also remembers having had her first experience dining on linen tablecloths in Upward Bound:
I remember eating at a restaurant with the white linen tablecloth. That was my
first experience with that, you know, because I didn't have the Cotillions, and I
didn't have the etiquette lessons that many kids have now. But I remember
Upward Bound counselors, you know, telling us how to place...where to place the
fork, bread plates.
She also reminisces about going to see the play, Little Shop of Horrors:
I remember going to my first play. And you know, growing up in the hood, if you
will, nobody goes to plays, you know. We went to go see that as a stage play. And
so now, you know, it's like yes, I go to Hamilton. Yes. I'm going to a play. Yes,
I've been to Broadway. And to think that Upward Bound planted that seed.
Through Upward Bound, Sonia discovered she enjoyed attending plays as a cultural activity, an interest she still pursues to this day. Upward Bound opened Sonia’s eyes to attending plays for cultural enrichment.
When asked about her perceptions of college before getting involved in Upward
Bound Sonia says:
So, in my household my mom and dad made it clear that our responsibility as
parents is to get you through high school, and that is what we're going to do. If
you go to college, you're on your own, and that was just how it is. So there was no
legacy money. There was no savings plan. If you go to college, you're on your
own.
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This pushed Sonia to consider her pathways into college through potentially getting a scholarship—through her academic achievements or through her athleticism. If those did not pan out, she had resigned herself to entering the military. With guidance from her
Upward Bound Advisor, she was encouraged to apply to Ohio State University and pursue a degree in Engineering because of her strong mathematical skills. She received a full-ride scholarship.
However, Engineering was not a good fit for her and she left Ohio State after only two semesters. Distraught over losing her scholarship and lacking a plan for forward mobility, she reached out to her Upward Bound Advisor. She describes the supportive nature of her advisor, long after she had left the program—that of a lifetime mentor. Her advisor encouraged her to analyze what about her Ohio State experience had not been a good fit. Sonia stated that it wasn’t the academics, but that the university was too big.
And she often felt alienated because she did not see others in her engineering courses who shared her African-American identity. It was reminiscent of her experiences in her
Physics class in high school. Her advisor encouraged her to attend an HBCU where she majored in Mathematics instead. Upon graduation from college, she landed a job with
NASA after interning with them for several summers while in school. She, once again, felt alienated and described her time at NASA as being like the experiences of the women in the movie, Hidden Figures, where most of those she worked with were older White men and very few people of color or women. She, again, sought the advice and guidance of her Upward Bound Advisor. The Advisor suggested she come work for the Upward
Bound Program in which she had once participated. This gave her the opportunity to then use her employee benefit of free tuition to earn a Master’s degree in Education. Sonia,
127 then went on to teach Mathematics to high school students. Today, she is a school district superintendent and acknowledges the impact of Upward Bound on how she educates her own students:
So those are the types of exposures that have helped to form my sustenance, if
you will, and make me the person that I am today. And it also drives me to want
to give those experiences to my current students. So, you have the academic—
that's what I am. That's my court, you know, that's the cornerstone. But exposure
and activities and access and opportunities...that's what drives me because I know
it made a difference in my life through Upward Bound.
The Upward Bound Program not only guided her through high school and college. It continually provided support in her adult life to assist her with the guidance to make pertinent decisions about her continuing education and career choices.
Sonia is now the mother of one daughter, who is now an adult. She shares that when her daughter was five years old, she bought a starter home in a neighborhood with good community schools. Because her daughter’s birthday fell after the kindergarten start deadline, she had her daughter take the kindergarten exam to enter school early. She was told that her daughter did not pass the exam. Because she was an educator, she was suspicious of the fact that her daughter did not pass and asked to see her daughter’s exam scores. She was told by school officials that they were not permitted to share her daughter’s scores with her. Sonia sensed that she was being lied to and decided to place her daughter in a private school instead. She says she worked two jobs to put her daughter through parochial school. Later, she enrolled her daughter in a predominantly
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White high school which had a reputable basketball team, as her daughter had become an accomplished basketball player.
Sonia says that she did all of the things for her daughter in her college preparation process that Upward Bound did for her. She sent her daughter to various camps during the summer on college campuses like Purdue University, Brown University, and
Hampton University. When her daughter was struggling academically in school, she took her to Sylvan Learning Center for tutoring help. She even made sure to take her daughter to plays, just as Upward Bound had taken her. She points out that Upward Bound did all of those things for her for free. But now, she is more affluent since she’s earned multiple degrees and built her career, so her daughter is not eligible for those types of programs.
Therefore, she has to invest her own money in providing those types of exposure opportunities to her daughter. And while Sonia’s parents had told her that she was responsible for financing her own college education, Sonia told her daughter that she would cover the cost of her undergraduate degree. If she aspired to earn a graduate degree, she would be responsible for financing that one herself.
The organizational skills Sonia learned in Upward Bound, she passed down to her daughter. She sees this as a major reason why her daughter has been successful, even into her adult life. She says:
But with my daughter, thanks to the organizational skills Upward Bound instilled
in me, we operated with a plan book. And she quickly learned that time
management is critical and that everything needs to be written down, from your
choir rehearsals in church to your basketball practices with school, to you know,
the dance, the junior prom, but day-to-day homework because I was looking at it
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every day. I want to see what homework because I would call, you know, I would
make an appointment if I'm starting to see you have no homework. You haven't
had any homework in English all semester. So that was something that Upward
Bound taught me—organizational skills. I think that was a course we took and it's
flowed down to my daughter, even to this day as an adult. She's a planner. She has
an itinerary. She knows exactly, you know, where we're going, what we're doing,
what we need to pack, what time, and I just look at her and say, 'yep, I did that. I
created that monster.'
Sonia’s daughter attended an HBCU for her undergraduate studies and earned a
Bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice.
Unlike the last section, which details the experiences of Upward Bound participants all from the same program, this section details the narratives of five study participants from three different Upward Bound Programs across the state of Ohio. Ten to
15 years into existence, similarities can be seen in the services and experiences Upward
Bound provided the study participants. The participants overwhelmingly express Upward
Bound provided a strong support system, which encouraged their academic and personal success. Two of the participants from this section share that they returned to Upward
Bound to work in a professional capacity. The next section will present the narratives of study participants who were enrolled in Upward Bound during the late 80s and early 90s.
Late 80s/Early 90s
The study participants in this last section participated in Upward Bound when the program had been in existence for 20 to 25 years. Although they participated much later than the participants in the previous two sections, many of the descriptions of their
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Upward Bound experiences are consistent with the descriptions of the earlier participants.
And while by this time period it was more common to see first-generation students, low- income students, African-American students, and women enrolled in college, in this section, we will also see the advent of the media’s influence on African-American students attending college.
Lewis Daniels
When asked about when he got involved in the Upward Bound Program, Dr.
Lewis Daniels shares:
So my first year of high school was 10th grade. And in my first year of high
school, I learned about the Upward Bound Program. And once I joined the
program in 10th grade, it just opened my eyes to a whole bunch of possibilities of
what my life could become.
An African-American man who had been raised by a single mother along with his three older siblings, Lewis says he and all of his siblings attended college. However, he was the first to graduate from college.
Before Upward Bound, he had only heard of colleges in the Cleveland area where he lived. Upward Bound exposed him to colleges and universities all over the State of
Ohio, and even took him on a Historically Black College and University tour. He reminisces about how he and several other African American students in his high school who were in the top ten of their class were told by a guidance counselor that they could definitely go to Cuyahoga Community College. They were not encouraged to go to four- year colleges or universities. “And so I was so happy when I graduated from Hampton, so I could come back and show him. Not only did I get a college degree, but it was not a
131 two-year, it was a four-year,” he says. He ended up graduating from Hampton University, a Historically Black University.
Lewis says that even from the time he was a kid, he wanted to be a teacher. He was that kid that always liked to play school, and even admits to being a teacher’s pet.
However, it was the influence of a math teacher he had during his time in Upward Bound that he credits for his current career path:
And I ended up becoming a teacher. But I really didn't know what I wanted to do.
But when I was in Upward Bound, my counselor...she ended up...she was my
math teacher in the beginning. When I started Upward Bound, she ended up being
our program Counselor, and then our program Assistant Director. And she was
the one that I just like, really looked up to because she was like from the same
area in Cleveland, which is kind of like a project area...Very low-income and she
was a graduate of Spelman College. And then she became a math teacher, so...and
I was always good in all subjects. But I just became a math teacher because of
her. And then she became a principal. I became a principal because of her. She's
a Superintendent now, and so my goal is to become a Superintendent. She has
been like my mentor since 1986 and I've just always looked up to her.
He talks of how he worked for his Upward Bound Program as a Tutor-Counselor during the summer after graduating from the program, later taught math for the program, and even served as Assistant Director, just as his mentor had done. He speaks of the great honor it was to serve as Assistant Director under the same Director that had nurtured him as a student in the program.
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Of his Upward Bound experiences, Lewis talks of enjoying living on campus, having gone to a Japanese restaurant, and going to see plays at the Statehouse Theater in downtown Cleveland. He says these experiences, for him, are unforgettable. “The one thing that absolutely made a lasting impression is ‘mediocrity is not acceptable,’” he says of a saying he learned in Upward Bound. This is a saying that he has lived daily since his time in Upward Bound and uses as a resounding tenet in educating his own students. "To be early is to be on time. To be on time is to be late. To be late is totally unacceptable,” is the other guiding principle he lives by, taught to him by his Upward Bound mentors and role models.
When asked to talk about the process of selecting schools for his own children,
Lewis says:
That's an excellent question. And so because my wife and I are both from the
inner city of Cleveland and really had difficult childhoods, we knew that for our
children, we had to move in communities where we were going to have to do one
of two things—pay tuition for them to go to a private school and live in the city.
Or find a surrounding suburb to move to that had some type of good academic
rating based off state report cards and all of that.
To that point, they started out in a lower, middle class suburb of Cleveland. And while they liked the area, the schools were just ok. They felt they needed something better.
Therefore, they bought a house in Twinsburg, Ohio to afford their children the opportunity to attend highly-rated schools. Twinsburg is a small suburban community between Cleveland and Akron with a population of just under 20,000 that was rated one of the top 50 places to live by Time Money Magazine (Bohan, 2015). Two of his sons
133 have graduated from the high school there and gone onto college, with one who is currently a high school senior, and a daughter in seventh grade.
His oldest son was involved in a dual enrollment program, earning his Associate’s degree at the same time as his high school diploma. He then finished up his Bachelor’s degree in two years at an HBCU in Florida. His second son is currently enrolled at a large public school in Kentucky, and his third son is in the running for a Presidential
Scholarship at the flagship school in Louisiana. He jokingly says that his daughter, who is in the seventh grade, already knows she is going to Spelman College in Atlanta and pledging the sorority her mother is a part of. She’s got it all planned out.
Lewis reflects on each of his sons stating that he is their role model and the pride that gives him. He grew up without a father, so he strives to be the father to his children that he never had. Education is strongly encouraged in their household. He pushes his kids to attain all they can in terms of education. And he models that behavior for them.
He says he had all of his children and his wife present when he defended his Doctoral dissertation. He says he will say to his sons, “Daniels Men!” and they respond, “You are greatness!”
Of the college application process during his time in Upward Bound he says:
And then, we had to have all of our college applications done by November the
1st, have financial aid—FAFSA, you know, start it January 1st to have it
completed by January 31st. And then make your college visits between February
1st and March 1st. And make your final decision on where you're going to go
before you go to your senior prom. And I promise you, we did the same thing
with each of our children.
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He took the exact same approach in the college application and enrollment process with his children as he had gone through during his Upward Bound experience.
Lewis has a great deal of gratitude toward his Upward Bound leaders for the experiences he had in the program and the profound impact it had on his life. He describes his Director, Ms. Barbara Berry as being like a mother to all of the students in the program who gave her entire life in the service of her students. He even gained a lifetime mentor in his relationship with Dr. Renee Willis. In follow-up correspondence with me he describes how her influence in his life still guides him professionally today.
Of his Upward Bound experiences, he says:
And so it...Upward Bound...Ms. Ramsey, when I tell you...I cannot...It makes me
emotional sometimes...that program and all they invested in us...And when I was
composing the email to you...I have so many more friends that have so many
more similar stories they could tell you.
Lewis points out that he is not alone in terms of the positive influences the program has had on his life. The Upward Bound Program has had a similar impact on the lives of his peers as well.
Khalil and Nicole Davis
High school sweethearts Khalil and Nicole Davis both grew up in a small industrial town in Ohio, but on different ends of town. Both identify racially as African-
American. Nicole grew up on the predominantly Black south end, while Khalil grew up out east, which was predominantly White. They attended different high schools, but met when they both joined the Upward Bound Program. The experiences they had in their
135 separate education environments, as well as those they shared, had a profound impact on the decisions they made in educating their own children.
Khalil describes his household growing up as a middle-class, single parent household. He was raised by his mother and has one older brother. His was a loving household, where he was also supported by his grandmother and uncles. His grandmother and mother had grown up in his neighborhood, so he describes an environment where everyone knew one another. He says this shaped his behavior as a child because he knew that if he misbehaved in the neighborhood, it would get back to his family very quickly.
Because of the close-knit nature of his neighborhood, he never really had a curfew and was free to come in late and at his leisure, as young as 12 years old. His family was reassured of his safety by the fact that his neighbors were looking out for him, and he was a kid who rarely went looking for mischief. He attended his neighborhood schools, which were only two blocks from his house, up until the time he went to high school. When he started ninth grade, he went to the predominantly White high school across town.
Nicole also grew up in a single parent household, living with her mother, but says that her father was also an active part of her life. She describes coming from a close-knit community as well. She started out at her neighborhood school, but was then bussed across town to a predominantly White elementary school on the north end of town.
Attending school across town made it difficult for her to participate in sports and other extracurricular activities because her mother could not pick her up after practices due to work. Therefore, Nicole’s mother made the decision for her to attend the predominantly
Black schools in her neighborhood when she started middle school. Of her middle school experience in her predominantly Black school, she says:
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I got all the Black women teachers I could ever want with all the wonderful Black
woman attitudes that I had grown to love and appreciate. And you know, all the
moms and grandmothers...but I remember eighth grade year. I was outside during
lunch recess or whatever it was called and Ms. Bush, who was a counselor and
worked at...I don't know exactly her role. She said, 'Hey Nicole, you're a smart girl.
Here. You take this form home. I want you. I think you should be in something
called AP—Advanced Placement.
She contrasts her story with Khalil’s story in his predominantly White middle and high schools across town where, having a keen interest and talent in Science, he tried to get into a higher level Science class, but was denied—even after his mother came up to the school to advocate on his behalf. In our interview, Nicole acknowledges the fact that
Khalil got great grades in all his classes, just as she did. She points out that the difference was that she had people in her education environment who looked like her, that were pulling for her, pushing her to achieve more.
Of her Upward Bound experiences, Nicole remembers going to the symphony, museums, and on Black college tours. She reminisces fondly on the Black male role models she had in the program, including the program Director, Assistant Director, and a university professor who taught college courses for the students in the Bridge Program.
Nicole and her best friend were part of a pilot Pre-Bridge program where they took one college course as high school students during their Upward Bound summers. She says:
Doing that Pre-Bridge program and I didn't know what I was really doing and I
was just...you told me I should take a college course. I just took one that first year.
And I think, the second year that I took two and two or whatever. I darn near had
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enough credits, I think, for a whole semester of my freshman year or something—
the whole quarter.
The Upward Bound Program stretched Nicole to take college courses while in high school and she rose to the challenge, successfully earning college credits while still enrolled in high school.
The environment in which Khalil was immersed was a complete contrast to the one that Nicole described. Of his neighborhood and education environment, Khalil says:
Everything around me was White, so when I went to school, that [African
Americans] were probably 10 percent of the population. So, elementary, middle,
and high school—it shapes you. You just have to survive. You just have to
survive. You know, once I had kids, we’re not living in a small town. I said I want
to live in a town that enforces who we are…where we can see Black people with
money. Black people living in the middle class. Black people with opportunities.
Black people who were doctors, attorneys, business owners. I mean, when I went
to college, I wasn’t really thinking about those issues.
The environment he envisioned raising his children in is one much different from the one in which he was raised.
Khalil’s adjustment to Upward Bound was a little more difficult, as he was used to having the latitude to come and go as he pleased, but the Program forced structure on him. In reflection, he says:
Because you’re young and you just don’t know. So here I am, 16 years old,
fighting my mother, grandmother, the Upward Bound administration that I don’t
need to go on Tuesday. Why do I have to be there in the summer, reading Black
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literature, Black things…Mr. Chambers, the Director who never gave up on
me…never kicked me out. I wasn’t doing anything to get kicked out of the
program, but just to understand the talent I had and I needed more maturity, more
real world experience with other kids. And he knew that I had drive and
determination and the arrogance to do well in college, but he knew I didn’t even
know what a college experience was about. So for him to be sitting there hearing
me act a fool, taking things for granted, but him seeing the bigger picture,
believing in me and knowing that this program was right, even though I probably
was talking bad about it.
Khalil’s gratitude for the Program Director’s patience and vision is great..
Khalil talks specifically about a trip he took with Upward Bound to Chicago where he was given a bedtime by the Director and they butted heads because he felt the bedtime was too early. But the salient part of that trip for him was when he visited the
Hyde Park section of the city:
I remember going to Chicago and going by Muhammad Ali’s house in Hyde Park,
and I ended up living in Hyde Park after college. So it was embedded in my
mind—this is the city I’m moving to, here, right now. I had no idea there were
Black people that made money like they do in Chicago. ‘I’m going there. That’s
where I need to be.’
This experience exposed Khalil to affluent Black neighborhoods unlike anything he had ever seen in his small hometown, giving him a vision for the lifestyle he wanted in his future.
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For college, Nicole had her heart set on attending an HBCU, specifically Spelman
College in Atlanta. She persuaded two of her girlfriends to apply along with her, however, one was rejected and the other, waitlisted. She was accepted, but terrified that she would have to go it alone. When she received her award letter, she learned that after
Work Study and grants, there was $5000 that her mother was expected to pay. Her mother didn’t have $5000. That may as well have been $1,000,000. “So we didn't know about a parent loan because of course now I'm like '$5000? That's all? I could have been at Spelman. What?! We could've got a $5000 loan!' So, I'm like, 'I can't go. Oh my gosh!'” Nicole had also applied to Northwestern University. She didn’t know much about it, other than that it was a Big Ten school, and supposedly a big deal. Khalil had an extra application, and her Upward Bound Program leaders kept telling her to apply to more than one school, so she did. She was accepted to Northwestern and all of her tuition and fees were covered, with the exception of $600. Her mother could handle that amount, and so the decision to attend Northwestern was solidified.
Khalil had an older friend who had attended Northwestern, so that school was on his radar, and a friend he played basketball with had told him about Columbia University in New York. He applied to both and was accepted to both. His decision was made based on geographic location—he wanted to live in Chicago, not New York. Therefore, he chose Northwestern. He and Nicole had made plans to end their high school romance when her plan was to go to Spelman and his was to go to Northwestern. However, they decided to attend Northwestern together, thus, also making the decision to stay together.
Of their experiences at Northwestern, Nicole says that when they tell others that they went to Northwestern, people are impressed by it, but they did not feel they got as
140 much out of their experience there as they feel they should have. Nicole had an interest in
Acquisitions and had planned to major in Business at Spelman. However, Northwestern had no Business major, so she majored in Economics instead. She says:
We had the Black House at Northwestern and African-American Student Affairs,
but I needed a little bit more than that and I just didn't feel comfortable. At
Northwestern, I mean, when I was ready to graduate, they weren't helping me
with how to do my resume. They weren't helping me with interviews. I was in the
Black Undergraduate Law Business Association, and they are helping with
resumes and with interviews and telling us who was on campus. The Econ
Department—no question—did not.
She then goes on to compare her experience with a lack of support at Northwestern to
Khalil’s experience in his predominantly White high school. She says that Khalil was much better supported at Northwestern because he was an Engineering major and that department provided a high level of support for its students. Both graduated from
Northwestern and have both gone on to earn advanced degrees, Khalil an MBA and
Nicole, a Ph.D.
Khalil and Nicole are now married and are the parents of three children—two boys and a girl. The oldest son is currently enrolled in college. The middle son will go off to college in the fall. And the youngest, their daughter, will start high school in the fall.
Both Khalil and Nicole had been the products of their public, neighborhood schools, but wanted a more enriching experience for their children. Both had traveled extensively by the time they became parents and felt that exposing their children to a second language would be beneficial to their development. When their sons first started school, they were
141 living in the Cincinnati area and decided on a German language academy that wasn’t too far from their home.
The family then moved to Detroit. The reputation of the public school system in
Detroit at the time was poor, but Khalil and Nicole did their research. They did not want to spend tens of thousands of dollars on private schools for their kids—they preferred to reserve that money to cover the cost of their kids’ college education, as they knew they now earn too much money to qualify for many of the financial aid grants they had benefited from themselves. They found a couple of highly-rated magnet schools within the Detroit public school system. Students had to test into those schools to attend. And best of all in the Davis’s view, the schools were predominantly African-American. This was important to them, as they wanted their children to experience the type of support, encouragement, and motivation that Nicole had received in her education experience in the schools of the predominantly Black side of their small town in Ohio, rather than the marginalization Khalil had experienced in his education experiences in the schools on his predominantly White side of town. Their sons attended a prominent public school for elementary and middle school. The Davises then decided to place their sons in a Catholic high school with a good-sized African American enrollment, so as to minimize their distractions. However, their daughter attended a Montessori preschool which provided her with an advanced foundation before entering the same magnet school her older brothers had attended. She will attend a public magnet high school with a prominent program for aspiring doctors, as her parents feel she will be less distracted in a public high school than her brothers would have been.
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The Davises always make it a point to be present at parent meetings, parent- teacher conferences, and other school functions, especially while their sons were at the
Catholic school, which still had a predominantly White student enrollment. They wanted to be sure that the school personnel knew that both of them were heavily involved in their children’s lives. In terms of homework help, Khalil and Nicole report being able to provide high levels of homework help because his background in Engineering and hers in
Economics, and Business and Community Development. If ever they are unable to provide help, they say they have friends they can call upon to help their kids with their homework.
The Davises are encouraging all of their children to attend HBCUs. Khalil says that after four years at Northwestern University while working on his undergraduate degree, he had never been exposed to anything dealing with the stock market. But when he began pursuing his Masters of Business Administration at Northwestern, he was then exposed. To his surprise, there were many young African-American undergraduate students there, on the trading floor, from HBCUs like Morehouse, Spelman, Florida
A&M, and Howard. He felt slighted in his college experience. He says he was told that attending Northwestern would give him a nice diverse network of connections. He says that his network is 99% African American—he could have gotten that from an HBCU. Of the reason he believes students he sees attend HBCUs are so successful, he says:
Because when they’re in undergrad, they’re getting messages from people they
trust, that they know about those jobs, [people] with position. Because the
difference between them and me and Nicole is they feel like they own that school
at Howard. They feel like part of that school when they go to Morehouse or
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Spelman. They feel like they’re part of that school at FAMU. When we went to
Northwestern, we never felt a part of the school. We never took ownership of that
school. We walked around that campus and every seven days, we were asked to
see our ID by some campus security officer. So I’m saying, is this better for
Blacks?
To that end, Khalil says that it is time to stop sending bright, African-American talent off to White colleges where there is a strong possibility that those students will be marginalized, just as he and Nicole were. He stresses that we need to support our Black schools and our Black students need the support that only our Black schools can give in preparing our future generations of leaders.
The Davis’s oldest son is currently enrolled at Morehouse College in Atlanta, while their middle son is strongly considering Xavier University in New Orleans for their pre-medical program. Nicole points out that Xavier graduates the most medical students in the country, so they feel that this would be a great fit for him. Although she will only be heading off to high school in the fall, their daughter already has her heart set on attending Spelman College in Atlanta when it is time for her to head off to college.
Khalil credits Upward Bound with changing the trajectory of his life:
I could start seeing separation between my life in my hometown and moving into
the middle class. And with every summer, I started making that transition, the
progression. You look at K through 12, age five to 17 where I live in a certain
small house in that town and whatever. Then I get to Upward Bound summers.
It’s the first time I’m really eating three meals a day—breakfast, lunch, and
dinner. The first time I’m in a room where I’m not sharing with a brother and my
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bed is not right…my bed is perfect. And then from Upward Bound, I went to
college. And not just any old college, I went to Northwestern. Then, the Bridge
Program in the summer and Northwestern in the fall. And to Exxon-Mobile as my
first internship in college. It was a transition period that went into effect
immediately after Upward Bound. So I appreciate it to this day, like nothing else.
It changed my life. It changed the trajectory of my life for sure.
Because of the preparation he received from Upward Bound and the experiences the program has afforded him, he has been exposed to far more than what growing up in his small, Midwestern town could have ever shown him.
Antonio Sparks
“I came up in a pretty religious household where I recently recounted to my mother, who disagrees, that I felt like we went to church about six days of the week,”
Antonio Sparks says of his upbringing. An African-American man and an only child in a two-parent household, he describes his upbringing as a good one in a loving home. His father worked in the paper mill and his mother worked as a nurse. Getting good grades was important to both of his parents, but he felt it was more so valued by his mother. The standard set for him was all A’s & B’s. He remembers having been grounded throughout most of 8th grade because he had earned a few C’s. Although education and good grades were important in his household, he felt that his parents more so desired that he be a decent, God-fearing person.
College was not something he had given any thought to until he joined the
Upward Bound Program because no one in his family had gone to college. His mother had heard about Upward Bound through her social circle and thought that it would be a
145 good experience for Antonio. At first, he was excited about the program because he could receive a stipend and get paid for his participation. He later came to also enjoy the classes, living on campus, meeting people outside of his church circle, and the freedom that being away from home afforded him. He even speaks of having met his wife through the program.
He reflects on the cultural experiences that he gained through the program. Of the exposure to cultural activities, and specifically, Sammy Davis, Jr.’s showmanship,
Antonio says:
Those were like, very impactful. I remember seeing Sammy Davis and we were
like kids, you know, and just seeing him...like he's going to fall off, fall off the
chair he was playing on, but like we're just so into it.
He says he did not attend many of the college campus tours because the influence of the
Cosby Show and A Different World solidified his desire to attend a Historically Black
College or University. He says that many of the campuses he remembers them visiting were predominantly White colleges and he was not really interested. He says that the exposure that Upward Bound provided through field trips and other outings provided him with experiences of which he could talk about and draw reference to when he later worked on the stock exchange floor after relocating to New York.
During his time in Upward Bound, Antonio’s prospects of going to college went from non-existent to being something that was definitely going to happen after high school. His initial career aspiration was to become an accountant. He reflects on knowing a church member who worked as an accountant and decided that it would be a good fit for him, as math calculations came easy to him. And although Upward Bound did not
146 ultimately influence his career goals, he says Upward Bound showed him that college was something that he could realistically pursue, which opened the doors to his eventual career path—working for an asset manager, but also as a photographer and entrepreneur.
Antonio is now the father of two. His oldest earned a bachelor’s degree in
Hospitality Management from Kent State University and is now working in that field.
The college selection process for his oldest was built around both finding the best
Hospitality Management programs and his being able to have family close by. Of the decision process, he says, “The program seemed to really check off all the boxes for what it was that he was looking for. Really it was a decision for him to make and I supported that.”
Now residing in the New York/New Jersey area, his youngest is a freshman in high school, attending a very small private school, not far from where they live. He says that graduation rates and student-to-teacher ratio played a role in the decision to send her to school there. The small size of the school allows for lots of direct communication with school personnel. The school itself offers many unique learning opportunities, including study abroad exchange programs to promote the students becoming global citizens and world travelers. Antonio says his daughter may be afforded the opportunity to visit the
South of France as a high school student because of this. Although she has not made any definitive future career aspirations at this time, they have had discussions about colleges and universities in both New York and out west, like UCLA. Antonio says he has had discussions with her about it not just being about having the grades—she’s got those. It is also about building a great resume, even as a high school student.
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He says that he realizes that college is not the only option. However, for his children, the expectation is that they will go. Upward Bound set that expectation for him.
He says that as a teen, he understood that that was the purpose of the program—to prepare him for college. So now, he has set the same expectation for his children.
Xavier Evans
“I loved school! Loved it. It was fun. I liked reading. In school, we had a library.
You could take books out and read them. And so that was the kind of thing I loved to do,” says Xavier Evans, reminiscing on his school days. An African-American man, he describes his upbringing in the projects of Cincinnati as being rough. One of three siblings, raised by a single mother on welfare, Xavier describes himself, yet and still today, as an avid reader who saw school as an opportunity to do plenty of what he loved to do—read. School was a safe-haven from a tumultuous home life, a respite. According to Xavier, students who did well in school were rockstars. And Xavier was definitely a rockstar all throughout school.
Attending what he calls “project neighborhood schools” growing up, Xavier says he was always told to do well in school, but ‘doing well’ in school was perceived by the adults in his life as being contingent more upon his behavior in school, rather than his academic performance. Therefore, according to that logic, if he received good grades, it was because he had behaved appropriately in school, not necessarily because his academic performance was strong.
When I asked about his perceptions of college as a kid, Xavier responds, “College was nothing until 1984. 1984 is when The Cosby Show began. And so every week we had
Dr. and Mrs. Huxtable, who were two black people who had a very different lifestyle
148 than the one I was experiencing.” Xavier says he watched obstetrician, Dr. Heathcliff
Huxtable, and his attorney wife, Claire parenting their five children, leading an upper- middle class lifestyle, much different from the lifestyle he was leading. He remarks that
Dr. Huxtable regularly wore college sweatshirts on the show, while mentioning the schools. Seeing the names of the schools would prompt him to go to his guidance counselor at school to request college materials from those schools to learn more about them. Heathcliff Huxtable became like a role model for Xavier. He says he wanted to become a doctor like him, and even still dresses like him today. He wanted to be a doctor until he realized that doctors dealt with blood and bodily fluids. He then decided that he wanted to become a lawyer, like Mrs. Huxtable.
In 1987, the television show, A Different World, hit airwaves. A spinoff of The
Cosby Show, the Huxtables’ daughter, Denise leaves home to attend Hillman College, the
Historically Black College her parents had attended. American audiences were introduced to a different culture of collegiate life that had been mostly unknown to mainstream America. Xavier says that that show solidified his desire to attend a
Historically Black College or University. The show tackled the typical issues of college life, such as academic challenges, drug and alcohol use, and sexual assault, but it also tackled issues that were specific to African American college culture such as classism, racism, and Black Greek life.
Xavier’s introduction to Upward Bound happened in the 10th grade when his high school guidance counselor suggested he get involved in the University of Cincinnati
Upward Bound Program. It was not until the end of his 11th grade year that he was actually admitted to the program and then experienced his first 6-week summer program.
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Of his Upward Bound experience he says it was an immersion of what college life would be like. It gave him a sense of comfort in being on a college campus. And while the
Upward Bound students did not take classes with the college students on that campus, they were still among them, eating in the cafeteria and using the other campus facilities, right along with the college students.
Xavier speaks fondly of hearing regularly from guest speakers. He describes them as Black people who were professionals and were somehow affiliated with Upward
Bound. They would often have dinner with them as well. These interactions taught him the power of networking, which later translated into being able to talk to professors during his college years and ask questions. The speakers presented images of Black people that were different from the images he saw in his everyday life—educated, professional Black people who were middle class or upper-middle class. He says that many of those folks he met during his teenage years in Upward Bound are still professional connections he keeps in touch with today.
He also notes that Upward Bound put him in the room with other kids from his neighborhood who also had aspirations of attending college. He says:
I mean, when you're 14 years old you don't sit around talking about ‘I can't wait to
get into college so I can major in Economics or something.’ You don't have those
conversations, you know. That's what adults tell us. But when I was in Upward
Bound, these conversations happened all the time. And so there's a strength in
knowing you're not alone in an endeavor or in a goal that you have...that others
want the same thing too. You know, that's powerful.
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He no longer felt like the lone solitaire with big hopes and dreams. He now had a peer group with similar aspirations, and supportive adults who made them believe that those hopes and dreams were achievable.
In reminiscing on his Upward Bound experiences, Xavier speaks very highly of the Upward Bound Olympics. This is an event where Upward Bound Programs from all over the State of Ohio would compete in both athletic and academic competitions on a college campus in the state. This experience allowed Upward Bound students the opportunity to visit different college campuses across the state. Of that experience,
Xavier says:
And so it wasn't that we're all just sitting together and we're like burnt out from
basketball. But we also had an academic part of that, too and again for someone
who like me—enjoyed history, loved history and loved school, this was kind of
satiating that desire to have that kind of like, that part of me somehow celebrated
and again, it wasn't just me. There were tons of others...we had...in the
competitions, there were math competitions. There were science competitions.
And so there were lots of people who could participate in whatever their interest
area was. And so that was always great.
He mentions the Upward Bound Olympics taking place at Wittenberg University one year and at Bowling Green State University another. He also speaks fondly of how the
Upward Bound Programs would travel to other campus to interact with students from that campus’ Upward Bound Program. He talks of taking a bus trip up north to visit the
University of Toledo’s Upward Bound Program.
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When a person is familiar with college-going culture, there are certain things that are just part of their common knowledge. Of the college enrollment process, Xavier says,
“I didn't know there was an admission application. I didn't know that you had to have letters of recommendation. These are the kinds of things, as I progressed into Upward
Bound, I'm learning,” Xavier says. He continues:
That's what Upward Bound did. Upward Bound was like two or three years of an
editing process of telling me things that I just did not know. I had no idea...I didn't
even think about how to pay for college. I didn't know it cost. I've been going to
school for 12 years. I don't know. I just show up and they teach me. I didn't know
you had to spend money for this.
He says he did not have parental assistance in completing his FAFSA. He simply got a copy of his mother’s monthly welfare statement, multiplied that amount by 12, and that is the amount he put on his federal financial aid application. He describes Upward Bound as a two to three year editing process of his dreams. And through college campus visits, he learned what questions to ask to determine if a college would be a good fit for him, and if they offered the resources he had learned he would need to be successful there.
Upward Bound not only provided Xavier with the knowledge and support he needed to get enrolled in college, they provided him with the skills he needed to navigate the collegiate landscape and experience success during his college matriculation. Of his experience when he first arrived on his college campus he says:
I saw people in college who came from a background like mine. They were the
first person in their family to go to college. They had no real guidance whatsoever
and did not know what to do. And they were just kind of like floating, waiting for
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someone to push them in the right direction. And because I had Upward Bound, I
knew more than they did.
Xavier successfully earned his Bachelor's degree from a historically Black university and later went on to become an attorney—like Mrs. Claire Huxtable.
Xavier is now the father of a daughter, and two nephews whom he adopted and raised as his own. He began his professional career as a teacher, although he did not teach at the schools his kids attended. However, being a teacher allowed him to be a vested partner in his kids’ education process. In our discussion on school selection for his kids, he tells me the story of how, as a law school student, during a social gathering with classmates, he started to realize that all of his classmates knew each other and had come out of Ivy League colleges and universities. When he began to question them about it, they talked about having gone to ‘feeder high schools’ where the Ivy League schools would actually come to their schools to recruit students. This was completely contrary to what he had previously known about the college admission process—he had thought that if you wanted to attend an Ivy League school, you completed the admission process for that school. The new knowledge he had received was that if you attended a ‘feeder school,’ the Ivy League schools would come looking for you at your school.
Armed with that knowledge, when his daughter was ready to start school, he had heard a news report of a Montessori school in an affluent neighborhood in Cincinnati looking to boost their enrollment of African American students. Xavier used his new- found affluence to get an apartment in that neighborhood so that his daughter could attend that school. He then found a public school in that same affluent neighborhood for his nephews to attend. As his daughter progressed through the school system, he
153 continually searched for the feeder schools with connections to the Ivy League colleges and universities. His research led him to one of the best high schools in the State of Ohio, which is a part of the Cincinnati Public School District. He settled in that neighborhood and his daughter graduated from that high school.
Xavier says that in his household, education was constantly being reinforced in his home for his students through reading and completing mathematics and reading workbooks outside of school work. He says:
But what I also knew is that I had to complement that education at home. So we
just sort of did things at home because you just had to. You cannot trust it to
school. Education is a parent's responsibility. It's just a teacher's job. But the
responsibility is with the parent.
His kids knew that the expectation was that they read, do homework, and sheets in their workbooks before they were allowed to go outside and play. He taught his kids that education did not exist for its own sake, but as a bridge to something else. The motivation to get homework done came more from the motivation to maximize educational opportunity, than the fear of punishment, as it had been in his home while growing up.
In a very candid discussion with his nephews about why he chose for them to live in the neighborhood he did, he said:
You have to get a good education so you can get a good job. You get a good job,
you live in a good neighborhood. And because good schools are not in all
neighborhoods, you’ve got to be in the neighborhood where the good schools
are—so your kids will get a good education, so they can get a good job, so they
can put their kids in a good school and live in a good neighborhood. And so I
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began to have those kinds of conversations because school was a means to
something else and that isn't what I was told.
Both of his nephews later enrolled in historically Black colleges, while his daughter enrolled in a predominantly White institution, as she pursued a degree in Fashion Design and with her father’s guidance, was able to find the most sought-after programs in the country, three of which are based in the State of Ohio, and enrolled in one of them.
Of parenting continuing-generation children Xavier says:
So, I think if you have that kind of triangle going, then that's how you build a
solid foundation. But you have to...If you don't know how to guide your kids like
my mom didn't, then your kid has to have someone else out there.
Upward Bound was that ‘someone else’ who guided him, but also showed him how to guide his own children.
The youngest of the group of 14 study participants, the participants in this last section are all in the mid-point of their professional careers. Some shared that they have college-enrolled children, while still having younger children living at home. They were able to vividly detail the college preparation process and high school-to-college transition for their children because they are either currently in the middle of that stage with their children, or freshly out of that process. Also of interest is the influence of pop culture media on three of the participants in their decisions to attend historically Black colleges.
In this chapter, the study participants’ narratives vividly detail the recounting of their upbringing, the influence of the Upward Bound Program on their lives, and their decision-making as it pertains to educating their children. Although they shared a variety of experiences, similarities can be seen across their Upward Bound experiences,
155 regardless of which program they were a part of. Many of them formed lasting connections to Upward Bound, with several of them returning to their programs for assistance in their adult lives. Three of them even worked for their Upward Bound
Programs on the professional level. Many strongly credit Upward Bound with providing them with life lessons as it relates to college access and degree attainment. They then reported using those lessons to inform the education process of their own children and guide them through to postsecondary enrollment. Further analysis of these themes will take place in Chapter 5.
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CHAPTER 5
FINDINGS
Study Participants’ Upward Bound Program Experiences
The research questions investigated in this study were: What were the experiences of the alumni of the TRIO Upward Bound Program while enrolled in the program? And in their perceptions, how did those experiences influence the creation (or not) of a college-going culture in their households for their own children? The first part of this section will focus specifically on the lived experiences of the study participants during their Upward Bound participation. Topics of discussion include program entry and the participants’ motivations for joining the program. Also discussed is how the program assisted the participants in their high school-to-college transitions, the mentoring and role models the program provided them, and the forms of capital the participants gained from the program. These lived experiences will shed light on the college access services the
Upward Bound Program provided to them while they were in the program as high school students.
The second part will explore how the study participants saw those experiences influencing their approach in parenting their own children in terms of educational opportunities, and how those experiences contributed to their creating a college-going culture in their homes for their children. Themes that will be explored include the school selection process for the participants’ children and the study participants’ involvement in their children’s educational process, as well as their advocacy on behalf of their children.
Forms of capital will be explored again, but in relation to the forms of capital the study
157 participants were able to pass down to their children. Finally, two emergent themes will be examined—the role of racial identity in the study participants’ experiences and the media’s influence on college-going.
Pathways for Study Participants
The first research question seeks to glean details about the Upward Bound experience as lived by the study participants. Although each participant detailed experiences in the program that are subjective and unique, many of their experiences share similar aspects. This is even despite the fact that study participants’ involvement ranged from the late 1960s through to the early 1990s, and took place at four different host institutions of higher education across the state of Ohio. This section will illustrate their experiences of how they learned of the program and began their involvement, and their motivations for joining the program. It will also describe the ways that the program contributed to their academic success and how the Upward Bound staff served as role models and provided mentorship to the participants. These themes were chosen to give context to the experiences of Upward Bound Program participation and the services the program provided the participants.
Program entry. Study participants generally entered the program as early as the summer after their 8th grade year, and as late as the summer before their 12th grade year.
They expressed first learning about the Upward Bound Program in multiple ways. Brian
Henderson said his older sister had first participated in Upward Bound at Wittenberg
University and shared her experiences with him. Her descriptions of Upward Bound made him want to join. Sophia Comer-Stiles said that it was an older cousin participating in the program who made her want to join. Sophia said the program sounded so good, she
158 and her friends walked miles across town to Wittenberg University to find out more and inquire as to how they could get in. Janet Robinson said she had friends who were in the program and told her she should join “because she would be good at it.” In a relatively small town like Springfield, news of a program like this traveled fast. Trusted others, such as family members or peers in their community had shared information about
Upward Bound with study participants, which encouraged them to get involved in the program.
Although how exactly they became involved in the program was a little fuzzy for some of the participants due to the passage of time, six recounted having met Upward
Bound staff who were in their school buildings recruiting students to the program.
Desegregation bussing resulted in Sonia Dixon’s enrollment in a high school across town that was targeted by Upward Bound. Xavier Evans stated that school personnel such as his guidance counselors and other school staff encouraged him to get involved. Upward
Bound staff are encouraged to build relationships with school personnel so that school personnel can recommend students to the program. Dee Dee Dennison even spoke about how her parents were not initially excited about her being away from home for six weeks in the summer, living on a college campus, and Upward Bound Program staff made a home visit to share more information about the program and assuage her parents’ fears.
This was also the case for a few other participants.
Participants’ narratives confirmed there was no one specific pathway to Upward
Bound Program enrollment, as the study participants described multiple ways of becoming involved. This suggests that multiple ways of getting the word out to students about the benefits of Upward Bound and how to join should be utilized for the greatest
159 impact. Anyone who regularly comes in contact with students could be beneficial in sharing information about Upward Bound.
Motivations for joining. For a kid like Brian Henderson, coming from a large family with 10 siblings, he was motivated to get involved by things like sharing a room on campus with only one other person and having all the food he could eat in the cafeteria. Those things also motivated Sophia Comer-Stiles to join. Earning a $5.00 per week stipend for participation was an additional incentive for Sophia—that was a lot of money to a kid in the late 1960s. Participants expressed being motivated to join by the promise of field trips, and also the opportunity to earn free college credits through the
Bridge Program. Some participants, such as Khalil Davis, were encouraged to enroll in the program by their parents and other family members. Khalil said that his grandmother had worked as a custodian at Wilberforce and Central State Universities and was a strong proponent of her grandson one day going to college. She had heard of the program through her social networks. Khalil shared:
Her friend, Shirley [Ellis] used to work with her and she worked with Upward
Bound. So when I was a sophomore, she started talking to me about me joining
Upward Bound. So there was always this focus from my grandmother to say
‘look, I’ve got a plan for you.’
Khalil’s grandmother used that social connection to get him enrolled in Upward Bound.
Many participants shared that getting away from their parents for six weeks during the summer motivated them to join. Several of the participants said they came from very strict households where they were not allowed to do much outside of their homes. Therefore, Upward Bound offered them a level of freedom they did not have at
160 home, and an opportunity to meet kids they otherwise would not have had the opportunity to meet. Other participants, such as Xavier Evans, described their home life as tumultuous. Upward Bound offered them a respite from that environment. He stated:
But when I'm in Upward Bound, it's almost like, I wasn't the only person on that
island. There were like a hundred other people with me who were growing up,
kind of like I was growing up...who were also interested in going to college. So
there was a strength in knowing I wasn't alone.
Xavier was also motivated by being surrounded by other kids his age who had goals of attending college and bettering their situations.
In recounting their motivations for joining Upward Bound, the study participants expressed a myriad of reasons why they wanted to be a part of the program. Some of their motivations were material, such as being able to earn a stipend or go on field trips, while others stemmed from wanting to explore a new environment or gain freedom from their parents. It is possible, even likely, that participants had multiple more complex motivations than what they were able to recount years later. However, from the information they provided, we are able to determine what the study participants felt were the perceived benefits of getting involved in Upward Bound.
Academic Success
The study participants discussed aspects of program involvement that bolstered their academic success in high school, and set them up for success in college and beyond.
Many mentioned that tutoring in academic subjects was a part of their Upward Bound experience, not only during the summer residential component, but also during the academic year as well. Lewis Daniels spoke of how Upward Bound held a study hour
161 each evening during the summer program from 7:30pm to 9:00pm in his dorm room. He then took that experience and transferred it to his home life while he was in high school, making his study hour at home from 5:00pm to 7:00pm during the academic year.
In combination with the structural aspects of the program, such as the scheduled study hours and tutoring in academic subjects, there were also the relationships the study participants said they built with the Upward Bound staff. Significantly, the participants spoke often of having built relationships of mutual respect with Upward Bound staff, who pushed them to be their best and refused to settle for mediocrity. Lewis Daniels also shared how he was a high achieving student, but decided to slack off on an English essay one summer. His Upward Bound Assistant Director told him that he did not meet the expectations set for him and was not allowed to go to Cedar Point amusement park with the rest of the students who had completed their assignments. He said he still has a high level of respect for her to this day for expecting more of him when he was not living up to his full potential.
Sarah Eugene talked of how she loved her English classes in Upward Bound. One of their assignments was to keep a writing journal. She said she still has her journal from that English class today. She shared how her Upward Bound English classes encouraged her love of writing. And it is only fitting that she is now a published author of three books.
Study participants noted that Upward Bound Program personnel set high expectations that they would go to college. Along with those expectations, Upward
Bound Program personnel showed them that they were capable of competing and thriving on a collegiate level. Of his Upward Bound experience, Darryl Thompson stated, “It gave
162 me that sense not only can you go, but you can be very successful at college among, you know, any race of people. You can be very successful.” The participants expressed feeling empowered to believe that they could earn college degrees and these degrees would enable them to pursue professional careers and earn higher incomes over their lifetimes. Some of them shared that Upward Bound also taught them the power of talking with professors. This was excellent preparation for success in college as attending faculty office hours is a part of academic success in the collegiate environment (Smith, Chen,
Berndston, Burson & Griffin, 2017).
Study participants also conveyed fond memories of being lauded for their academic success during the annual Upward Bound award banquets and also during the academic competitions at the Upward Bound Olympics. Of her experience, Angela Roe shared:
I remember the one [trip] that I received an award for math because I did not
consider math to be my strongest subject. And so that probably was like one of
the things that I…the trip that I liked the most.
Lewis Daniels also remembered having received awards during the Upward Bound award banquet: “So every summer for the banquet, I would always win like 'Most Outstanding' in different subjects.” Several of the participants remembered having received plaques, certificates, and other awards.
Study participants’ narratives included stories of receiving academic support and motivation from their Upward Bound Program experiences. Many credit their Upward
Bound experience for their academic success in high school and their preparation for
163 their college careers. Upward Bound set high expectations for academic achievement and the study participants reported feeling both challenged and supported.
High School-to-College Transition
Along with taking tours of college campuses while in Upward Bound, as previously mentioned, study participants described the services Upward Bound provided to aid in their transition from high school to college. Participants described receiving assistance in preparing for the ACT and SAT college entrance exams, completing their college applications, completing their FAFSAs, help with deciding on a college major and ultimately, which college to attend. The study participants shared that Upward Bound personnel encouraged them to enroll in college preparatory courses while in high school, and even gave them the opportunity to take college courses and earn college credit while in the program through the Upward Bound Bridge Program. They also expressed that being in Upward Bound made them feel comfortable being on a college campus, especially through programs that entailed students living in campus residence halls for intensive courses or group experiences. Therefore, several of the participants expressed that they were not intimidated by the collegiate environment when they did finally enroll in college because they had had so much exposure to college campuses through their
Upward Bound experiences.
Many of the participants shared that, after enrolling in college, they returned to work for their Upward Bound Program. Some returned to work as tutors during the academic year. Others worked as residential staff or teachers during the summer component. Subsequently, others returned to the program to work as professional level staff, such as Sonia Dixon and Lewis Daniels who served as Assistant Directors, and Dee
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Dee Dennison who is currently serving as a Program Director and has worked for that program for 34 years. Dee Dee said, “It was just the opportunity for me to act on all that was given to me and that's what I've been doing for the last 34 years.” Their belief in the effectiveness of the program led them to want to give back to the program by working for the program on the professional level.
Mentoring and Role Models
According to the study participants, another significant aspect of the Upward
Bound Program experience was the mentoring and role models the program provided for them. When first-generation students are unable to receive college support from their parents, having mentors and role models who can provide college-going, college access, and college success information is pivotal (Austin, 2011; Means & Pyne, 2017; Hébert,
2018). Participants indicated that they were able to build strong relationships with their
Upward Bound Program staff and teachers, who provided the necessary mentorship and guidance they needed.
Some of the study participants described the Upward Bound staff as being like parents to them. Lewis Daniels described his Upward Bound Director as legendary, saying, “she was like our mother and she gave her life for us. I could never give back to that program all I got from it.” Dee Dee Dennison described her Upward Bound program as being like family:
It was the family that I was longing for because of my parents’ divorce. In fact, if
the program was traveling and I didn’t have money somebody was going to make
sure I got what I needed. They were always taking care of your needs and that
sticks with me today.
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The familial feeling of Upward Bound provided Lewis and Dee Dee with an added layer of support outside of their homes.
The study participants shared that Upward Bound Program staff provided the motivation and support necessary for them to believe they could achieve. Lewis Daniels said, “I knew that when I was first attending college, I knew that I could graduate because
Upward Bound was my support system.” According to the participants, Upward Bound often supplemented the guidance and motivation they may not have been receiving in their high schools, but was necessary for their academic success.
Many of the study participants expressed having formed lifelong connections with their Upward Bound staff and teachers. Sonia Dixon shared that she returned to her
Upward Bound staff connections multiple times after high school graduation to assist in the redirection of her college and career choices. Of one of those experiences, she said:
So being a Civil Engineering major at Ohio State only lasted two quarters. I left
there. And at that point I really was torn like, 'Okay, I messed up this scholarship.
What am I going to do?' And I really was thinking of going to the [military]
Service. And that's when my Upward Bound Advisor, you know, she called me
back and said, ‘Well, let's start over.’
The connections Sonia formed with her Upward Bound staff would remain long after she had graduated from high school. According to Sonia, she would return to the staff she had connected with during her Upward Bound years to seek college and career advice several more times during her college and professional career.
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Forms of Capital and Funds of Knowledge
The theoretical frameworks explored for the purpose of this study are forms of capital, specifically cultural and social capital (Bourdieu, 1983; Bourdieu, 1986;
Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992), and funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzalez,
1992; Kiyama, 2011). The study participants were first-generation college students. The participants described the Upward Bound Program providing them with experiences and connections that represent the cultural and social capital valued in the dominant culture, adding to the capital they had also received from their parents. Funds of knowledge were explored as an anti-deficit model because, while the parents of first-generation students may not have completed postsecondary degrees, they are, of course, still capable of passing down valuable funds of knowledge that equip their children to survive and thrive in society. Funds of knowledge are the lessons and skills that are culturally and historically accumulated within families and passed down from one generation to the next. These skills are essential to the functioning of the household, as well as individual functioning in society. Cultural capital, social capital and funds of knowledge are all equally valuable forms of capital, and for this reason it is useful to explore study participants’ narratives using all three concepts to highlight different aspects of their experiences.
Cultural Capital
All of the study participants spoke of the activities and field trips they experienced through Upward Bound. Sonia Dixon recounted seeing Little Shop of
Horrors, having her first formal dinner at a restaurant with linen tablecloths and napkins, and going canoeing for the first time. Antonio Sparks reminisced about seeing Sammy
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Davis, Jr. perform. And Khalil Davis shared that one of his most impactful Upward
Bound experiences was taking a trip to Chicago where he saw Muhammad Ali’s home.
He would later make his home in that same section of Chicago. These experiences became part of the participants’ knowledge-base, expectations, preferences and interests, and therefore can be understood as examples of cultural capital being built through participation in Upward Bound.
Cultural Capital is a collection of general information, knowledge, habits and skills that one can acquire to forward their social, educational, or economic standing in society. Cultural capital can be passed down from one generation to the next (Bourdieu,
1983; Bourdieu, 1986; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). Building one’s cultural capital can help people from underrepresented groups better acclimate to the dominant culture, giving them the cultural competence necessary to navigate a collegiate environment
(Cates & Schaefle, 2011). Of the cultural activities he experienced through Upward
Bound, Antonio Sparks said, “I can remember being able to refer to trips or activities that
I did with Upward Bound, like pull from my references.” Participating in Upward Bound gave him enriching experiences which he connected with personally and then could later draw from as points of reference once he entered college and started his professional career in New York City. Other study participants detailed experiences of taking trips where they saw the nation’s Capital for the first time, visited New York City, or toured other college campuses. Some participants shared that the Upward Bound Olympics were a vehicle to see other college campuses across the state as well. Upward Bound often exposed students to cultural experiences beyond what their parents were able to. All of these experiences built up and became part of the study participants’ cultural capital.
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Social Capital
Social capital (Bourdieu, 1983; Bourdieu, 1986; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) is the cumulative network of resources possessed by a group, shared through the relationships between individuals in that group, which work to benefit those who belong to the group. Social capital is a durable good that can be passed down from one generation to the next within a group of people. Information and resources, such as economic gains are passed from one member of a group to another through their social networks, such as families or organizations. Study participants describe having had experiences during their Upward Bound participation that increased their social capital.
According to Xavier Evans, Upward Bound gave him the opportunity to engage with other kids his age who also had aspirations of attending college and bettering their circumstances. For him, being in this environment took away the stigma behind being
‘the smart kid’:
Within me, I wanted to go to college. But when I'm in Upward Bound, it's almost
like, I wasn't the only person on that island. There were like a hundred other
people with me who were growing up, kind of like I was growing up...who were
also interested in going to college. So there was a strength in knowing I wasn't
alone.
Upward Bound created a space where high school students could discuss their college and career goals, as this was highly encouraged. Xavier and a few others expressed that
Upward Bound gave them the opportunity to interact with kids from all over the State of
Ohio who also had aspirations of attending college, and without being in Upward Bound, they would not have otherwise had that opportunity.
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Bethany Martin, Dee Dee Dennison, and Xavier Evans all spoke of how meeting guest speakers and professionals at Upward Bound student conferences and during other
Upward Bound programming events expanded their professional networks. Of the professional connections Bethany was able to make during her Upward Bound experience, she says:
What was most important and what I really gathered from that was the
networking—meeting professionals as a youth and getting information from them.
That was what made me want to get serious with college—talking with them and
hearing their stories; getting encouragement. Yeah, I think that was probably one
of the most influential experiences I've ever had. I communicated with a few of
them for a few years and was able to use them as references.
These interactions with professionals enriched the Upward Bound participants’ social networks and put them in the same room with folks who were college degree holders.
These interactions further inspired them to pursue college degrees and become professionals themselves.
Upward Bound sweethearts who later married. A few of the participants shared that they met their future spouses as participants in the Upward Bound Program. Upward
Bound impacted these participants’ social capital in a very immediate way by serving as a venue where students were able to interact with other students with similar goals, thus allowing them to find suitable mates.
Nicole and Khalil Davis went to different high schools, but met in Upward Bound and began dating. They attended the same college together and are currently married today. Lewis Daniels said that he also met his high school sweetheart during Upward
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Bound and is married to her today as well. And Antonio Sparks shared that he met his now ex-wife during their time in the Upward Bound Program. Upward Bound provided these participants the opportunity to connect with dating partners who had similar goals of degree attainment.
The Upward Bound Program strengthened the study participants’ overall social connections. The program provided them with connections to degree-holding adults and other students who, like themselves, would later become degree holders and professionals. Upward Bound served to build social capital for the study participants while they were still in high school.
Funds of Knowledge
I examined funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzalez, 1992 ;Kiyama,
2011) as an anti-deficit model to balance the discussion around first-generation college students in respect to cultural and social capital (Bourdieu, 1983; Bourdieu, 1986;
Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). Multiple study participants expressed that their parents taught them skills and lessons that could be considered funds of knowledge. Several of the study participants described, for example, being taught a strong work ethic by their parents. Of her home life growing up, Bethany Martin said, “Education was stressed. We were taught a work ethic. Basically things that were stressed in our home were education and a good work ethic.” This translated into jobs they may have worked while growing up, as well as how they approached their careers after earning their degrees. Sarah
Eugene stated that her family worked as domestics. Of her family’s experience, she said:
My older siblings worked as domestics also in the same household that my father
did. He put them to work because he believed in a good work ethic. And he also
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felt like, you know, the children needed to learn that also. So...And also to make
money, of course, which was very little, but still was more than what they had.
Sarah described her mother working as a domestic in her teenage years for a White family to allow her the opportunity to live closer to a school and get an education. And although Sarah refused to work in a domestic service job, she was still taught many skills related to that line of work.
A few of the study participants talked about how their parents encouraged them to value a strong faith life. Darryl Thompson and Antonio Sparks specifically discussed a strong faith life, and Christian morals and values being taught in their households, with
Antonio’s father actually pastoring a church. Darryl shared that he is a minister today.
Sophia Comer-Stiles described her aunts as entrepreneurs. She vividly described the various businesses her aunts owned in their small town and the services they provided:
My grandfather's oldest sister owned a cafeteria. And her husband owned the
barber shop right next door to it. So they kind of like ran a cafeteria-barbershop.
My other great aunt had an insurance company and was pretty influential in the
insurance business. And my third aunt, basically, she worked as a domestic, but
she also did alterations and sewing. And then, two of my aunts got together and
opened a bakery.
She even reminisced about making visits to client homes with her aunt to collect money owed for insurance premiums. Sophia also shared that her family were farmers early on when they lived on the edge of town, and that they owned many pets and farm animals.
Funds of knowledge were taught to her by her father in running the farm and tending to
172 the animals. Sophia also talked about sewing and making her own clothes growing up, which is another fund of knowledge she gained from her aunt and utilized. These funds of knowledge reflect multiple valuable skills and lessons that were passed down to the study participants by their parents and other older family members. These lessons and skills contributed to the proper functioning of their households, served to produce household income, and would ultimately aid the participants in being successful in their adult lives.
Many of the participants recounted being taught that getting an education was the way to better their circumstances. Dee Dee Dennison said the message she heard from her family was: “‘Girl, you got to get a degree. You can better yourself. I grew up in the inner city.’ So it was more or less, ‘to get out this inner city, you're going to have to do more than we did.’” Dee Dee realized that she would have to get a college education if she was going to surpass what her older family members had accomplished. Sophia said her father taught her the importance of reading to know what is going on in the world.
This fostered her love for reading and later translated into a career in Library Science.
And Bethany Martin said that her mother required her to do school work in reading and math throughout the summer to keep her continually learning.
Although the parents of the study participants were not formally educated, they were able to pass down rich funds of knowledge to their children which contributed in some ways to creating a college-going culture for them. They were able to pick up transferable skills that they could later use in the pursuit of their collegiate education, as well as in their professional lives. Some of those skills, such as a strong work ethic, an appreciation for education, and entrepreneurship worked to prepare them for success in college.
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College-going Culture
A college-going culture is one in which the expectation of pursuing a higher education is set by the adults and also espoused by the children (Corwin & Tierney,
2007). This can be within the context of a school, a home, or any organization. High academic achievement is valued and praised by the adults in the culture, which then motivates the children to strive toward academic success. High academic achievement is normalized in a college-going culture and the pursuit of higher education after high school is a set expectation. Information about colleges and college-going is freely shared amongst the children in a college-going culture (Schneider, 2007; Holland & Farmer-
Hinton; Welton & Williams, 2014).
The participants in this study described multiple instances and experiences where the Upward Bound Program facilitated the creation of a college-going culture in their lives as high school students. Sarah Eugene, Dee Dee Dennison, Bethany Martin and
Angela Roe shared that they completed their baccalaureate degrees later in life. The seeds that Upward Bound had planted during their adolescence, yielded baccalaureate degrees later in their lives.
Because she was not yet a baccalaureate degree holder when her children started high school, Sarah Eugene’s children were eligible to enroll in Upward Bound and she got them into the program. Xavier Evans enrolled one of the nephews he was raising in the same Upward Bound Program he had been a part of as well. (Because his nephew’s birth parents were not degree holders, he was eligible for Upward Bound.) Upward
Bound exposed the participants’ children to a college-going culture similar to what the participants themselves had experienced via the program. This speaks to the value of the
174 program in the perceptions of the study participants. Even though Sarah had not yet completed her baccalaureate degree by the time her children were old enough to enroll in the program, for example, she still saw Upward Bound as a vehicle to enrich the lives of her children and propel them toward college.
Pathways for Study Participants’ Children
All of the participants described behaviors and practices that created a pathway toward college access for their children. A key finding of this study is that Upward
Bound was instrumental in helping participants to create their own college pathways, and that the study participants later drew upon their Upward Bound experiences to create these pathways for their children.
School selection played a major role in the creating of a college-going culture as the study participants were often very deliberate about the schooling experiences and environment they selected for their children. The study participants also reported high levels of parental involvement in their children’s education process, as well as advocacy within their children’s schools on their behalf. Forms of capital were also present in the educational experiences the parents were able to provide their children. The next section will detail the ways in which the parents created college-going cultures in their homes for their children and how they created pathways to college access for their children.
School selection. Because all of the study participants now hold baccalaureate degrees or higher, they now hold a different view of the school selection process than their parents once did. Many described simply going to their neighborhood schools, or being bussed to schools across town in desegregation efforts. However, most
175 demonstrated that they were much more intentional when it came to school selection for their own children.
Twelve of the 14 study participants described a sort of selection process when determining what schools their children would attend. They seemingly felt the need to ensure their children received better education opportunities than what they had had themselves. Because postsecondary education attainment is often a social mobilizer, the earning of their baccalaureate degrees helped to propel them up the socioeconomic ladder
(Pike & Kuh, 2005). Their newly attained affluence allowed 12 of the 14 the opportunity to move into better neighborhoods with higher performing schools. For some participants, there was a shift from them simply attending their neighborhood schools or the schools to which they were bussed to them selecting the schools their children would attend. These selected schools included private schools, magnet schools, or public schools in more affluent areas, such as suburban schools with higher ratings.
In discussing their options for schooling for their children, Lewis Daniels and his wife came to the following conclusion:
And so because my wife and I are both from the inner city of Cleveland and really
had difficult childhoods, we knew that for our children, we had to move in
communities where we were going to have to do one of two things—pay tuition
for them to go to a private school and live in the city. Or find a surrounding
suburb to move to that had some type of good academic rating based off state
report cards and all of that.
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They chose a move to the suburbs, but did not feel the schools measured up to their expectations. They later moved to a different suburb with better schools and all their children graduated from the local public high school in that community.
The Davises, knowing their children would not qualify for the college financial aid programs they themselves had benefited from, did their research in each city they lived in and found high-achieving public schools for their children. Rather than paying tuition on the K-12 level, they chose to reserve that money to invest in the cost of college tuition for their kids. Khalil talked about the standard they set in selecting schools for their children. He stated: “You’ve got to test [to get] in. So everybody can’t just come through the door. We believe in public schools, but you’ve got to test to get in. That has to be the standard.” It was only when they did not find a suitable public school experience for their sons that they enrolled them in a local Catholic school. However, their daughter will attend a public high school, which she will have to test into to attend.
Xavier Evans, armed with the knowledge of ‘feeder schools’ that he had received from his Ivy League educated law school peers, sought out the feeder schools in his area.
Attending one of these schools would provide his daughter with the preparation necessary to give her the option to attend an Ivy League college, if so desired. He said, “Once she got to the school and I found out about that other school for my nephews, I moved to that neighborhood so that all of them could go to school in the same neighborhood.” Moving into that more affluent neighborhood afforded his nephews, whom he was raising, the opportunity to attend high-achieving public schools as well. Bethany Martin stated, “So, I got an apartment [there] just so she could go to school there because I liked that school
177 better.” Getting an apartment in an affluent suburb afforded Bethany’s daughter the opportunity to attend a better school.
Xavier Evans, Bethany Martin, Darryl Thompson, and the Davises all expressed having chosen Montessori schools for their children’s elementary school years. Another key aspect of this theme, some participants elected to pay for private schools for elementary and middle/junior high school so that their children could gain a strong academic foundation, and then sent them to free public high schools.
In their paper, Bast and Walberg (2004) discussed whether parents were capable of choosing the best schools for their children and whether they would do a better job in selecting those schools than government agencies. They found that parents actually rated schools the same as did experts. The parents in the empirical studies rated schools based on academic outcomes, just as many of my study participants had. School performance data is readily accessible to parents, therefore allowing them to make informed decisions about where they will send their children to school. Many of my study participants sought out that data and used it to make the school selection decisions they thought would be best for their children. It is unclear, however, whether their Upward Bound experiences played a primary role in their school selection decisions for their children, or if those decisions were shaped more holistically by their own personal educational experiences.
Parental involvement and advocacy. Study participants reported high levels of parental involvement in their children’s education process while their children were enrolled in primary and secondary school. Many of them described having higher levels of involvement in their children’s education process than their parents had had in theirs
(i.e. actively providing active homework help to their kids, whereas their parents simply
178 trusted that they had done theirs). This involvement included regularly attending parent/teacher conferences, student activities and athletic events, regular visits to the school, and allyship with teachers and school building leaders. The study participants described situations of interaction with their children’s school officials that could be described as advocacy on behalf of their children’s education process.
Dee Dee Dennison, for example, shared that her children were student-athletes and many of the other parents of student-athletes were heavily involved in the parent sports booster clubs. Instead, she got involved in the PTA so that her voice could be heard on issues in the school that directly affected academics. Of that experience, she said:
My daughter played sports. She played basketball and she was a baller. But I had
no interest in being part of the Boosters club because everybody wants to be in the
booster club. I participated on the parent-teacher Association or Council, so when
I sat in meetings to talk about changes that were going to be in place that would
affect students academically, those were the meetings that I sat on.
She shared one instance in particular where she saw her son being grouped together in academic courses with all of the other African American students in the predominantly
White high school, so she spoke out about the marginalization of those students. Her regular involvement in the PTA gave her the platform that was necessary to have her voice heard. Because she was an active member of the PTA, she had a direct pipeline to the school building’s leadership. She says she regularly volunteered at her children’s schools, including proctoring ACT exams.
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When her son’s teacher contacted Angela Roe to inform her that her son was acting out in class by crawling around on the floor and not sitting in his seat, Angela inquired first about his school work. The teacher said that his work was excellent. Further investigation revealed that her son was bored in class because the work was too easy.
Angela suggested to the teacher that her son provide assistance to students in his class that may be struggling to learn the material. This solved her son’s behavior problems and put him in a leadership position in his class. He went on to tutor other students all throughout school.
Sophia Comer-Stiles found out that her daughter spent most of her class time in school running teacher errands rather than learning new material. Of that experience,
Sophia said:
I did have to go in a couple of times and...they weren't challenging her at all. She
spent most of her day running around, running errands because she'd get the work
done in five minutes, and then she'd be off. And I didn't like that. So I had to go
up a couple of times and have them literally move her into a more challenging
class.
Sophia advocated for her daughter to be placed into a more challenging course so that she could continue learning at her own accelerated pace, rather than being held back with all of the other students.
Being an educator herself, and also knowing her daughter’s academic abilities,
Sonia Dixon refused to accept being told that her daughter was not kindergarten-ready by officials at her local public school following placement testing. She demanded to see the test scores, but was told that her daughter’s test scores were confidential. She did not
180 agree that her daughter should wait until the following year to enroll in kindergarten, so
Sonia enrolled her in kindergarten at a private school instead. Her daughter went on to excel there.
Nicole Davis recounted the time her high-achieving daughter complained that her math teacher was moving too fast in class. At parent/teacher conferences, the teacher raved about how the Davis’s daughter was consistently the highest achiever in his class.
Nicole shared her daughter’s concerns about the teacher moving too fast, yet the teacher maintained that his pace was appropriate. Nicole then pointed out that if his highest achieving student is struggling to keep up, where does that leave the other students in the class? The teacher saw the truth in her logic and agreed to move a little slower going forward.
The parental involvement and advocacy activities described by the study participants align with Epstein’s (1995, 2007, 2010) multidimensional framework which describes six types of parental involvement: Parenting, Communicating, Volunteering,
Learning at Home, Decision Making, and Collaborating with Community. While
Epstein’s 2010 model describes actions educators and school officials can take to facilitate better parental engagement, many of the study participants described initiating these behaviors on their own in an effort to provide the support they felt was necessary for their children’s academic, social, and personal success. Study participants reported regular communication with teachers and school building leaders, volunteering their time at their children’s schools, reinforcing school lessons at home, and involvement in the decision-making processes for their children’s school buildings.
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Forms of Capital
Several important themes emerged from the data as forms of capital that the study participants were able to pass down to their children. One point that participants raised relevant to Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital and habitus had to do with reading as a household activity. Most parents, regardless of their education level can and will read to their children. However, several of the study participants shared that they were life-long avid readers and that they also actively encouraged their children to read. This played an important role in building a college-going culture in their homes for their children. A second theme that emerged was the intentionality of the study participants in exposing their children to learning and cultural opportunities. Two other emergent themes that surfaced were the question of who pays for college and the ability of the study participants to provide their children with career advice and guidance.
Reading. Although not expressly asked, five of the study participants described themselves as avid readers, from childhood up through adulthood. Those participants then encouraged their own children to read and to enjoy reading, as well. It is very possible that more of the participants may have also been persistent, engaged readers, yet did not disclose this information in their interviews. Xavier Evans described reading with his kids each evening before bed to cultivate a love of reading in them similar to that which already existed in him. Of that experience, he stated:
The other thing that was important was that we had an hour every day that we
turned off the television usually from 8:00 to about 9:00...and we're going to read.
That only works if my kids see me reading too.
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He acknowledged that his modeling the behavior was key to the kids’ buying in to the importance of reading.
Bethany Martin shared that she had one daughter who, like her, was into reading novels, while the other daughter showed no interest in reading. She noticed that, although her daughter would not read novels, she would pick up a magazine and read shorter articles. Bethany then began to make magazines available around the house, which encouraged her daughter to read. And although Sophia Comer-Stiles stated that her father was not very involved in her schooling, she said he was an avid reader and always encouraged her to read. He would always make reading materials available to her. She recounted that he never asked her if her homework was done, but always asked her if she needed more reading materials. He made sure that her supply was endless.
Whitten, Labby, and Sullivan (2016) found that students who pleasure-read are higher academic achievers than those who do not. Moreover, independent reading, or reading that kids do on their own as opposed to that which is required of them for school, has a positive effect on student academic achievement (Cullinan, 2002). This was reflected in the experiences of the study participants, many of whom described themselves as high-achieving students in high school. As parents, they set the expectation that their children would also be readers and encouraged reading to be a normal part of their regular routines. Some even scheduled reading time into their children’s days.
Children’s exposure to learning and cultural opportunities. Study participants expressed intentionality around the learning and cultural opportunities to which they exposed their children. Because it is a part of the Upward Bound experience, all participants noted that Upward Bound had exposed them to cultural and learning
183 activities, such as plays, operas, museums, and symphonies, serving to build their cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1983; Bourdieu, 1986; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) with experiences that may not have been a part of their upbringing. The study participants described later, as parents, introducing their own children to similar experiences. Xavier Evans discussed sending his daughter to summer camps in New York City that focused on her interests in fashion design and sending his nephews to Space Camp, while Antonio Sparks spoke of his daughter’s opportunity to study abroad in the South of France. His daughter had also attended educational camps during the summer.
Darryl Thompson said that he enrolled his daughter in a program called Yes to
Prep. He described Yes to Prep as “being like Upward Bound, but far more intense.”
According to Darryl, the objective of Yes to Prep is to prepare students to enter some of the nation’s most prestigious prep schools, many of which are feeder schools to Ivy
League colleges and universities. He said that his wife learned of the program through her social network and they thought it would be a good opportunity for their daughter. He credits that program with assisting her with getting into the prestigious high school she attended, and then ultimately into Harvard University, where she went on to excel and graduate. She is currently pursuing her graduate degree there as well.
Sonia Dixon talks of sending her daughter to summer camps each summer.
“Every summer she did a different kind of camp. And so that was me trying to give her her own summer Upward Bound experiences,” she said. Sonia said she sent her daughter to camps at Purdue University, Brown Engineering, and Hampton University. She said that she made sure her daughter was involved in other clubs and sports through school,
184 and leadership opportunities through their church. When she needed tutoring help, Sonia utilized Sylvan Learning Center to get her the support she needed.
Bethany Martin tailored her family outings and vacations toward educational experiences for her younger daughter who struggled academically in school. She stated:
I would always get an idea of what they were learning, what their focus was going
to be on and we would do our monthly trip going somewhere. We would go visit,
so she could see what it was. She was a hands on learner. So I always tried to
make things fun and in a learning environment.
These trips served to bridge the gaps in learning for Bethany’s daughter and made the lessons she was learning in school real for her.
All of the learning and cultural opportunities the study participants described exposing their children to served to build cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1983; Bourdieu,
1986; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) for their children. This capital then contributed to the creation of a college-going culture (Corwin & Tierney, 2007) in their homes, thus giving them pertinent experiences, knowledge, habits, and preferences to draw upon as they prepared for their college matriculation. Because the study participants have acquired a higher level of affluence through attaining their college degrees, they are able to provide their children with life experiences that are in line with those of middle class, and upper middle class life experiences.
Who pays for college. Discussions with several of the study participants brought to light the question of where the onus of paying for college rests—on the parents or the child attending college? Darryl Thompson spoke of paying Harvard tuition for his daughter who received very little, if any scholarship money at all. The Davises shared
185 that they purposely chose free public school options for their kids so they could put the money saved toward college tuition for their three kids. Dee Dee Dennison offered her children a set amount of money toward their college tuition and then coached them on how to make financially savvy decisions about which schools to attend based on their financial aid awards.
In contrast, Janet Robinson told her sons that if they wanted to attend college, they would need to figure out how to pay for it, whether it was through scholarships and grants, loans, or other means. Janet mentioned friends of hers in their early 70s who were still paying for their kids’ college through parent loans and how she and her husband were not willing and able to support their sons in that way. One son received a full-ride scholarship to college, while the other utilized military service to cover the cost of his schooling. Clearly, some study participants felt the onus of financing their kids’ college was on them, whereas others felt it was the responsibility of their children. Participants held various positions on this question. It is unclear, furthermore, whether participants views on who pays may differ decisively by race, income level, or some other dimension.
Career advice and guidance. Most of the study participants described navigating college selection, major selection, and career guidance either with the help of Upward
Bound, or on their own. Janet Robinson and Sophia Comer-Styles shared that they received guidance from their Upward Bound Director on college and major selection.
Sonia Dixon said she consulted with her Upward Bound Assistant Director several times through the years after she had graduated from the program to discuss career changes and professional opportunities. Similarly, Lewis Daniels found mentorship with his Upward
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Bound Assistant Director, and this connection has provided direction throughout his entire professional career.
While the study participants had to lean on Upward Bound and other professionals for college and career advice and guidance, all of them shared that they were able to offer some level of college and career guidance and advice to their children themselves. The Davises discussed being actively involved in the college and program of study selection process with their two oldest sons, especially in determining which college would give them the best deal in terms of scholarships and grants. Darryl
Thompson provided that guidance for his oldest daughter in her decision process when she selected to attend Harvard, as did Sarah Eugene with all three of her kids in their college selection decisions. And as an alum, because he was very connected to the business school at Florida A&M University and extremely familiar with the academic and professional opportunities offered there, Brian Henderson was able to connect his sons to that program as well.
And although pursuing and earning a baccalaureate degree was breaking new ground for many of the study participants who were the first in their families to attend college, many stressed that they encourage their kids to pursue education beyond the undergraduate level, pushing them to also attain graduate degrees. Nicole Davis said she and Khalil encourage their children to pursue advanced degrees. Of her kids, she said:
They have somebody to talk to about grad school, you know, whereas, I definitely
didn't really have anybody to talk to about grad school. I didn't even know if I was
going to grad school. But they get to hear about it and see it.
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Dee Dee Dennison said she specifically encouraged her kids to pursue graduate level education. She recounted telling them, "Don't just settle for a bachelor's degree. Go and get a masters. And go and get your PhD if you so desire.” Her daughter has earned both a
Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree. Whereas they had to seek out college and career advice from Upward Bound staff and trusted others, the study participants expressed being able to provide this information to their children themselves. This advice included assistance in selecting a program of study, selecting a college, scholarship information, career advice, and information on graduate school. This is social capital the study participants now possess and provide for their children. At the same time, these networks, communities, and knowledge about how to navigate them function also as funds of knowledge in their families, which they now pass down to their children.
Emergent Themes
Crabtree and Miller’s (1992, as cited in Creswell, 2007) coding continuum describes codes that could range from a priori to emergent. While my study illuminated several themes that were identified a priori based on my literature review and my theoretical frameworks, there were some themes that emerged in the course of analyzing participants’ narratives. Two important themes emerged prominently from the data in this way. Although these themes do not speak specifically to the research questions posed, they are important in framing the study participants' experiences, both as Upward Bound participants and subsequently as parents of continuing-generation children. Because these themes resulted from an inductive coding process, they may be understood as particularly powerful and relevant from the perspective of the participants. The first emergent theme is racial identity. The racial composition of the child’s prospective school was often a
188 factor in the study participants’ decisions of whether the school possessed the desired educational environments, opportunities, and experiences for their children. The second theme explores the media’s influence on students’ perceptions and expectations around college-going.
Racial Identity
All of the study participants were African American, but one. Yet, the theme of racial identity came up in each of their interviews. Some African American study participants described situations where they were bused to predominantly White elementary and secondary schools, which were believed to offer better educational opportunities, only to experience marginalization, alienation, and a lack of support. This was extremely apparent in the Davises comparisons of their schooling experiences, going to different schools with different racial compositions, on different sides of town. Nicole expressed feeling supported and having strong role models who shared her racial and ethnic identity. She was encouraged to pursue challenging educational opportunities like
Advanced Placement, while Khalil described being denied opportunities, such as advanced Science classes even though he was a strong student academically (who later became an Engineer). Their collective experiences at Northwestern University—where they described feeling invisible and excluded from the campus community—were deciding factors in selecting schools for their children that were not only high achieving, but also majority African American. Years later, they encouraged their kids to attend historically Black colleges and universities so that they could feel they were a part of their campus community, build relationships and receive encouragement from role models that share their racial identity, and not experience the invisibility that African
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American students sometimes experience on predominantly White college campuses
(Shabazz, 2015).
Janet Robinson was the sole study participant who identified as White. She credits her Upward Bound experience with exposing her to a diverse group of peers during a tumultuous time in American history where violence regularly occurred between Blacks and Whites in her city. Because she was fortunate to have that experience she wanted her sons to grow up in a racially diverse environment. She shared that her family moved into a suburban neighborhood in search of better schooling for her kids, just as many of the other study participants had done. The difference for her was the realization that her kids’ school lacked the racially diverse environment she had desired for them.
As mentioned previously, although many of the study participants attended their neighborhood schools or were bussed to schools in different neighborhoods in desegregation efforts, they were intentional in deciding where their children would attend school and what educational opportunities they would expose them to. A pertinent finding was that for many of them, race played a factor in what they determined to be the best educational experience and opportunity for their children. For the Davises, it was apparent that this decision was a direct result of their own educational experiences.
However, it is unclear for some of the others whether this decision was directly tied to their own experiences in their schooling, or some other factor. Many determined that the best educational experience they could give their children, whether on the K-12 level or the postsecondary level, involved a predominantly Black educational experience.
Providing this experience entailed attending predominantly Black primary or secondary schools in some participants’ examples, or HBCUs for their postsecondary experience in
190 others. Race is not a specific construct of a college-going culture, nor was it a part of my research questions. Nevertheless, it is important to note that, because of intersectional layers of racist, gendered, and economic inequities, study participants’ journeys required them to make sense of and navigate racist structures and discourses in their education process, as well as in those of their children.
The Media’s Influence on College-Going
Lewis Daniels, Xavier Evans, and Antonio Sparks were all high school students during the late 80s and early 90s when pivotal, highly influential Black movies and television shows were airing that depicted an alternative view of African American life— one that had been previously unexplored up to that point. Lewis Daniels made reference to the movie School Daze and its influence on him wanting to attend a historically Black college. Released in 1988 and written, produced, and directed by Spike Lee, School Daze shines light on campus life on a historically Black college campus and Black fraternity and sorority life. It also brought to light issues such as colorism and classism, and how they play out within the Black community (School Daze, 2019).
Both Xavier Evans and Antonio Sparks referred to the television shows The
Cosby Show, and its spin-off, A Different World and their influence on them wanting to attend college. Xavier also reflected on how watching the Huxtables exposed him to a different class of lifestyle that he, up to that point, was unaware that African Americans led. The Cosby Show aired for eight seasons from 1984-1992 and detailed the lives of Dr.
Heathcliff and Claire Huxtable who were raising their five children (The Cosby Show,
2019). The show broke new ground by exposing America to images of upper-middle class African Americans—Heathcliff was an obstetrician and Claire was a lawyer (The
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Cosby Show, 2019). The second oldest Huxtable daughter, Denise, went on to attend college at the fictional Hillman College, an HBCU, and the college her parents had attended. This was the premise for the show’s spin-off, A Different World, which aired for six seasons from 1987-1993 (A Different World, 2019). A Different World broke ground by exposing America to life on a historically Black college campus and broached subjects that broadly illuminated college life, but at the same time were specific to
African American culture as well (A Different World, 2019). Antonio stated that the show A Different World made him specifically want to attend a Historically Black
College or University.
Xavier expressed having viewed Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable as a role model—from the way he dressed, to the moral lessons he taught his family, and the value he placed on education. He credited Dr. Huxtable with influencing him to attend college after high school. He mentioned that Dr. Huxtable regularly wore sweatshirts bearing the names of colleges and universities. Seeing those shirts would prompt Xavier to inquire about the different colleges and universities with his school guidance counselor and do further research on those that were of interest to him. Xavier also discussed initially wanting to be a doctor like Dr. Huxtable, but then changed his mind when he realized that doctors are regularly exposed to bodily fluids. When he changed his mind, he decided to become a lawyer, like Mrs. Huxtable—and he practices law today.
Because these shows aired in the late 80s/early 90s, this finding is specific to the study participants who were in high school during that time. Therefore, study participants who were in high school during earlier time periods did not identify these shows as having been influential in their decisions to attend college. These shows not only
192 influenced Lewis, Xavier, and Antonio to want to attend college, but specifically introduced them to HBCU culture and solidified their decisions to attend an HBCU.
Conclusion
Although the 14 study participants participated in Upward Bound Programs at four different institutions, across Ohio, over four different decades, the experiences they described and the services they received are strikingly similar. My first research question examined participants’ experiences in the program to give context to my second research question, which examined whether and how those experiences contributed to the creation of a college-going culture in their homes for their own children.
The participants described learning of the Upward Bound Program from peers, trusted others such as family members, school personnel, and Upward Bound staff in their schools. They expressed many motivations for joining the program, which included, but were not limited to, the promise of participating in field trips, the allure of living in a residence hall on a college campus, the chance to get away from their parents and experience independence, and the opportunity to interact with other students who had the desire to attend college. The participants described receiving services from the Upward
Bound Program that contributed to their academic success, such as classroom instruction, tutoring help, support in their transitions from high school to college (assistance with college selection, college applications, financial aid, college entrance exam test preparation, selection of program of study, and career guidance), and mentorship and support from the Upward Bound staff.
Several forms of capital were gained by the study participants through their
Upward Bound experiences. The participants expressed having gained cultural capital
193 through Upward Bound field trips—plays, concerts, operas, visits to museums, fine dining experiences, and symphonies. They expressed having gained social capital as well.
Some described having the opportunity to meet professional adults through networking opportunities at student conferences, as well as other students across the state who had an interest in attending college as well. Three of the participants shared that they met their future spouses in Upward Bound. Upward Bound was not the only place that the participants gained forms of capital, as many expressed having gained rich funds of knowledge from their parents and other family members. These included a strong work ethic, an appreciation for education, and entrepreneurship experiences.
The experiences the study participants described having gained through Upward
Bound helped them build cultural and social capital, giving them skills, knowledge, and behaviors that they have since passed on to their children. Participants described using these Upward Bound lessons and experiences in creating a college-going culture in their homes for their own children. This is demonstrated through their intentionality around school selection, their purposeful involvement in their child’s education process through regular communication and relationship-building with their children’s school personnel, and advocacy for their child’s educational experiences.
The cultural and social activities that the study participants experienced through the Upward Bound Program built their cultural and social capital, allowing them to pass those tangible forms of capital onto their children. Many of the participants expressed having a love of reading that they passed onto their children as well, which promoted their children’s academic success. As parents, the study participants placed a high value on academic achievement and success. The study participants expressed intentionality
194 around exposing their children to learning and cultural opportunities, thus passing down the cultural and social capital they had gained to their children. The participants were also able to provide career advice and guidance to their children, in a way that their parents had not.
Other emergent themes not specific to my research questions surfaced through thematic and narrative analyses—most significantly racial identity and the role of television and film in participants’ experiences. Racial identity is important to consider as it played a role in how each of the study participants navigated their educational and professional journeys. The effects of systemic racism and oppression on the lives of people from oppressed groups in the United States pervades the American education system and cannot be ignored. Disparities due to being a member of a racial or ethnic minority group begin before a child ever starts school and exist at every level of the education process, through college graduation and into the job market (Cook, 2015).
Another emergent theme was the media’s influence on participants’ college-going. This phenomenon impacted only the three youngest study participants because the influential shows and film mentioned were released and aired in the late 80s/early 90s. Nevertheless it is still worth mentioning, as the impact of those shows could potentially have been far reaching. The Cosby Show alone had 82 million viewers during its run (Schwarzbaum,
1992). How many of those viewers were influenced to pursue higher education? More research is warranted.
The findings of this study provide detailed insight into the services and support
Upward Bound Programs provided their students. Upward Bound provided the study participants with college access by preparing them to succeed academically in college
195 and with their high school-to-college transition. The research study also demonstrated how the reach of the Upward Bound experience is multi-generational—Upward Bound changed how the study participants perceived the education process and influenced them to take a more active and intentional role in how they educated their children. The behaviors and practices they described created college-going cultures in their homes for their children, which prepared their children to succeed academically and pursue baccalaureate degrees.
In the next chapter, there will be a discussion of the key findings of the study in connection with my theoretical framework. I will also detail implications for practice for
Upward Bound practitioners and parents seeking to create college-going cultures in their homes, and implications for policy. Finally, I will share my suggestions for further research.
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CHAPTER 6
DISCUSSION
This critical qualitative narrative inquiry research study investigated the experiences of alumni of TRIO Upward Bound Programs in the State of Ohio who are now parenting college-enrolled or college-graduated children. It then explored how those experiences contributed to those Upward Bound alumni creating college-going cultures in their homes for their own children. This chapter will detail the major findings of the study, as well as connections to the extant literature. It will then detail implications for practice and limitations of the study. Suggestions for further research will also be discussed.
The research questions addressed in the study were: What were the experiences of the alumni of the TRIO Upward Bound Program during their program participation? And in their perception, how did those experiences influence the creation (or not) of a college- going culture in their households for their own children? Investigating these questions illuminated the experiences of Upward Bound Program alumni and the services the program provides first-generation college students. The study focuses on developing an understanding of these experiences and how, in the participants’ own narratives, those experiences influenced their later decisions and practices related to their children’s education. An understanding of these phenomena, from the perspective of Upward
Bound alumni, can help educators, practitioners, and parents of first-generation student
197 glean how college-going cultures can be created in children’s homes, regardless of whether their parents are degree-holders.
Discussion of Findings
Examination of the experiences of the alumni of Upward Bound Programs helped to detail the services and environments provided by the program and gave insight to how the participants perceived the influence of the program on their lives. One of the major findings of this study centers around the educational pathways followed by Upward
Bound Program alumni in Ohio. The study participants reported that through academic support, positive relationships with Upward Bound staff, assistance with the high school- to-college transition, and advising on major and career selection, Upward Bound created pathways for them to enroll in college and achieve success once enrolled. The other major finding deals with the forms of capital the study participants gained through their participation in Upward Bound, and then were able to pass on to their own children. The study participants already possessed the funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff &
Gonzalez, 1992; Kiyama, 2011) they had gained from their parents, but were also able to add to that the cultural and social capital (Bourdieu, 1983; Bourdieu, 1986; Bourdieu &
Wacquant, 1992) they had gained from Upward Bound, such as cultural and learning experiences, and social capital, such as meeting professional adults and other college- bound students. These were forms of capital that they were able to later pass down to their children.
Pathways
The study participants described first learning about the Upward Bound Program in many different ways, but the means of learning of the program that was most
198 prominent was hearing about the program from trusted others—parents, teachers, peers, guidance counselors, etc. Although Upward Bound staff are charged with actively recruiting students from their target schools to participate in the program, the study findings showed that many students learned of the program from friends, family, or others whom they already knew and trusted. Tapping into community, family, and school networks, may help Upward Bound Program outreach efforts to reach students via the trusted others who have the most influence on students. Study findings suggest that incorporating work with these networks would be an effective channel for getting students involved in Upward Bound.
Once enrolled in the Upward Bound Program, study participants spoke of having built strong relationships with the Upward Bound Program staff, which was integral to the success of the students in the program and had a strong impact on their academic success. The study participants reported receiving support and motivation to achieve academically from the Upward Bound staff. These findings are in line with Dansby and
Dansby-Giles’s (2011) study where Upward Bound participants expressed experiencing a familial atmosphere in their Upward Bound Program where they built strong relationships with supportive Upward Bound staff members, as well as like-minded peers who shared their aspirations of attending college. And just as in McClure and Child
(1998), Saliwanchik-Brown (2005) and Grimard and Maddaus (2008) the participants in my study recounted receiving homework assistance, preparation for the college entrance exams, college major selection, and assistance with the college application and financial aid process as well.
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The study participants reported that their Upward Bound experiences impacted the ways in which they shaped the educational experiences of their own children in varying ways. One prominent way participants illustrated this influence was through the schools they selected for their children to attend. The study participants described using intentionality in determining which schooling opportunities would best suit their children’s education process. Many of them said they had attended their neighborhood schools, yet after participating in the Upward Bound Program and earning college degrees, the majority made decisions to send their kids to private schools, or moved into more affluent neighborhoods with better schools so that their kids could get a quality education without having to pay tuition. One participant shared that her initial decision was to send her kids to private school, but because of a divorce and change in financial situation, she decided to send her kids to the neighborhood schools. Another participant decided on the neighborhood schools initially, but later moved to a more affluent area and then sent her children to schools she perceived to be better. Many of them described doing their own research to determine if a school’s rating met their expectations.
Parental involvement created pathways into higher education for the study participants’ children. The study participants reported being highly involved in their children’s education process during the time that their children were in elementary, middle, and secondary school. Many expressed the perception of being far more involved in their children’s educational experiences than their parents had been in their own. As previously noted in Chapter 5, several of the examples of parental involvement shared by participants aligned with aspects of the six types of parental involvement identified by
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Epstein (1995, 2007, 2010): Parenting, Communicating, Volunteering, Learning at
Home, Decision Making, and Collaborating with Community.
Both Fan and Williams (2010) and Ross (2016) utilized Epstein’s (1995, 2007,
2010) framework to investigate the effects of parental involvement on student success.
Fan and Williams (2010) found that students were more likely to feel supported and motivated when they felt their parents had high expectations of them academically. Ross
(2016) replicated Fan and Williams’s (2010) study and found that students were more likely to graduate from high school and enroll in college if their parents exercised high levels of parental involvement. The findings of their studies were apparent in my study as well. The study participants reported high levels of parental involvement in their children’s education processes and ultimately, their children enrolled in college and many are now degree holders or on the pathway to becoming degree holders.
In addition, the findings are also consistent with Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological
Systems Theory of Development (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). This theory holds that a child’s ecosystem is made up of microsystems, which include their home environment (parents, siblings) and also their school (teachers, classmates). A child’s mesosystem is made up of his or her individual microsystems interacting with one another. Therefore when the parents, which would be part of one microsystem, interact regularly with teachers
(another microsystem), it creates an environment where a child feels supported, allowing them the confidence and ability to achieve more. This dynamic was demonstrated by multiple participants’ parenting narratives, which included descriptions of their allyship with teachers, volunteering at school, advocating on behalf of their child at school, and attending their children’s school activities.
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While the Upward Bound Program helped the study participants to create pathways to higher education enrollment and degree attainment, the program’s impact proved to extend even further, across multiple generations in alumni families. Study participants consistently connected their Upward Bound experiences with the educational opportunities they created for their own children. The lessons learned via Upward Bound experiences manifested themselves in the participants providing guidance to their own children in their high school-to-college transition, the intentional cultural and learning experiences to which they exposed their children, and career advice and guidance they gave their children.
Forms of Capital
The study participants received funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff &
Gonzalez, 1992; Kiyama, 2011) from their parents, which gave them the skills and knowledge necessary to function in their households and in their adolescent and adult lives. Upward Bound added further dominant-culture cultural and social capital to the transferable forms of capital the study participants received from their parents (Bourdieu,
1983; Bourdieu, 1986; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). Through the narratives they shared, participants described passing these multiple, layered resources—funds of knowledge, cultural capital, and social capital—on to their own children.
Although study participants described receiving rich funds of knowledge from their parents, one prominent fund of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzalez, 1992;
Kiyama, 2011) that surfaced several times was an appreciation for reading. Many of the study participants said that they were encouraged to read by their parents, and described themselves as avid readers as children, as well as in their adult lives. They also expressed
202 encouraging a similar love of reading in their own children. Many described reading with their children when they were young, and encouraging them to read on their own as they got older. The behaviors of the study participants as kids themselves, and their encouragement of reading in the lives of their kids is a testament to the fact that students who pleasure-read are more likely to achieve academic success (Whitten, Labby, &
Sullivan, 2016). The appreciation for reading represents a transferable example of a fund of knowledge the study participants received from their parents, internalized, and then passed on to their children.
Parents reading books with their children improves the psychosocial functioning of both the children and the parents (Xie, Chan, Ji & Chan, 2018). It also improves children’s language, literacy, brain and cognitive development (Xie, Chan, Ji & Chan,
2018). Children often imitate behaviors they see modeled by their parents (Vygotsky,
1978). As with anything else, children need guidance and encouragement to read regularly. Reading is a behavior that must be modeled for them if the expectation is that they will read regularly on their own. Therefore, if they see their parents reading and they are encouraged to read themselves, they are more likely to become avid readers, like their parents. Parents and other adults must serve as role models who demonstrate an appreciation for reading themselves (Baker & Moss, 1993).
Furthermore, the study participants described experiences in the Upward Bound
Program that served to increase their cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1983; Bourdieu, 1986;
Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) through exposure to cultural activities and learning experiences. These experiences later benefited their children because the parents used their increased cultural capital to build cultural capital in their own children. Many of the
203 participants shared that they exposed their kids to learning and cultural opportunities much like those they had experienced in Upward Bound.
The experiences described by the study participants are consistent with
Vygotsky’s (1978) Sociocultural Theory. Vygotsky postulated that each event of a child’s cultural development appears twice—first on the social level and then again on an individual level (David, 2014). Vygotsky stated that a more knowledgeable other (MKO) is the individual who helps facilitate the cultural development in the first stage. An MKO can be a parent, teacher, or even an older peer. Upward Bound Program personnel can be considered the MKOs that facilitated that first stage of the study participants’ development, before the learning then took place within them individually (David, 2014;
Vygotsky, 1978). The study participants later functioned as MKOs for their children because of the cultural and social capital (Bourdieu, 1983; Bourdieu, 1986; Bourdieu &
Wacquant, 1992) they had built up through participating in Upward Bound. Drawing on those Upward Bound experiences that could be described as enhancing cultural capital, such as attending a symphony or canoeing for the first time, the study participants recounted feeling inclined and empowered to expose their children to similar learning and cultural opportunities, thus cultivating higher-level learning in their children, as described by Vygotsky (1978).
Implications
This study explores the narratives of college-going and parenting as told by 14 study participants who are alumni of Upward Bound Programs. This is not the type of study that will support statistical generalizability. Nevertheless, the research methods used in the study incorporated specific practices that support trustworthiness in general,
204 and more specifically, transferability across Upward Bound Programs (Lincoln & Guba,
1985). Use of thick description, for example, enhances both the transferability and replicability of the findings. The collection of data through both semi-structured interviews and in-depth reflexive journaling helped to provide triangulation and to establish confirmability. Because the study was done with Upward Bound alumni solely from the State of Ohio, interviews with Upward Bound alumni from other parts of the country may yield different findings in terms of Upward Bound Program experiences that were salient in the minds of the program alumni. Studies in different states and local contexts may reveal parenting experiences and practices that were not previously mentioned in my study.
The practices the study participants described in creating college-going cultures in their homes are, of course, particular to their families. Consequently, individual practices may not be universally transferable or relevant to other families. For example, some of the participants expressed moving into more affluent school districts to afford their children the opportunity to attend better schools, while others said they sent their children to private schools. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the fact that not every parent can afford to give their child that opportunity, as broadening socioeconomic inequality nationally and their individual financial situations may not allow them to do so. The poverty rate in the U.S. in 2017 was 12.3 percent, meaning 39.7 million
Americans were living below the poverty threshold (U.S. Census Bureau, 2019). Those living in poverty, and many families with middle- and lower-middle socioeconomic status, may be limited in their educational options for their children, having to rely heavily on free public or charter schools, often times in failing urban or rural districts.
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State governments provide the majority of funding for education and determine the amount of funding each school district receives (Cox, 2018). The amount of funding is based on tax revenues, so students in lower-income areas are educated by schools that are under-funded and under-resourced, creating disparities in the quality of education they receive (Jao & Associated Press, 2018). Upward Bound exists for this purpose—to level the playing field in education access and opportunity and give those who are potentially living in poverty the motivation and skills to gain access to higher education.
Racial identity emerged as a salient theme in this study, which had an impact on the educational experiences of the study participants who were interviewed because 13 of the 14 identified as African American. As earlier stated, the racial composition of
Upward Bound Programs varies based on the part of the country in which it is hosted, and even the target schools or target area the program serves. It is often a reflection of the racial composition of that geographical area. Therefore, it is very possible that Upward
Bound Programs that target many rural schools or areas may only serve White students, while a program in the Southwestern U.S. may serve a majority of Hispanic students.
Conducting this research study with Upward Bound alumni from a program with a different racial composition may yield different themes and findings. In that research study, race may not emerge as a notable theme or have as great an impact on the findings as it did in this one.
Finally, participant selection was somewhat of an issue in the study. I initially identified nine Upward Bound Programs in the State of Ohio that fit the criteria of my study—i.e., were long-running programs that also had a residential 6-week summer component. Although I had hoped to hear more voices from various Upward Bound
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Programs across the state, the majority of my study participants came from the
Wittenberg University Upward Bound Program. The Wittenberg program was able to provide additional support in putting me in touch with former participants, including some who were involved in the program in its early years. I was able to recruit a few participants from other institutions through snowball sampling, but ultimately there were a lot of stories from across the state that remain untold in this study. I recognize that the scope and timeline of this study would not allow for me to search out and interview everyone, but the desire is there to hear more of these stories and learn more about the experiences, perceptions, and practices of these first-generation parents of continuing- generation students.
Analysis of the narratives of the study participants yielded several implications for both practice, policy, and research. Implications for practice have the potential to impact the way Upward Bound recruits students and publicizes the program, as well as how it promotes and encourages parental involvement. Implications for practice can also inform parents’ efforts to create college-going cultures in their homes. Implications for policy focus on the way Upward Bound is funded through grant cycles, how students are tracked following high school graduation, and how the U.S. Department of Education defines student success and Upward Bound Program effectiveness. Implications for further research illuminates the need to track Upward Bound Program alumni beyond the
Department of Education’s current six-year post-high school graduation requirement to determine the number of alumni who earn degrees throughout their lifetimes in an effort to gage the true impact of the Upward Bound Program upon the lives of its former participants.
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Implications for Practice
Nationally, residential segregation negatively impacts educational opportunity
(Orfield & Lee, 2005 ; Blaisdell, 2015; Reed, 2015; Dixson, 2018; Ziskin, 2019). White, more affluent communities generate higher tax revenues for their school districts in comparison to lower income communities, which are more likely to be Black or Latino communities (Jao, 2018). These differences in tax revenue create disparities in school funding, which directly affects the quality of education in these lower income districts
(Jao, 2018). Socioeconomic status directly impacts academic achievement, as the achievement gap begins early on in children from lower income backgrounds, who tend to fall behind early (Garcia & Weiss, 2017). In only 15 percent of all schools where
White students make up the student majority are the majority of the students low-income; but a predominantly minority school in an urban area is six times more likely to be impoverished (Kozol, 2005). With only 38 percent of low-income students entering college directly after high school graduation in comparison to 81 percent of their peers in the highest income quartile, interventions are necessary to bring about equality in preparation for and access to higher education (Heuer, Mason & Lauff, 2016). Upward
Bound presents one intervention opportunity for students and boasts an 86 percent college enrollment rate directly following high school graduation, in comparison to 46 percent of families from the lowest income quartile (Council on Opportunity in
Education, 2019). More funding for more Upward Bound Programs is needed nationally.
In 2017, only 70,001 high school students were served by Upward Bound, yet in that same year, 8,689,000 children ages 6-17 were living in poverty in the U.S. (Kids Count
Data Center, 2019; U.S. Department of Education, 2018). And although this statistic
208 includes children ages 6-13 who may not yet be of high school age, those children who are below high school age will one day be enrolled in high school, making them potentially eligible for the Upward Bound Program.
There are many communities nationwide that are not yet served by Upward
Bound Programs, but are nevertheless in dire need of its services. Because many low- income families cannot afford to move into more affluent neighborhoods to send their kids to higher performing schools, and there are few effective schooling alternatives to the under-achieving public schools in their communities, Upward Bound Programs could serve to fill the educational gaps for these students and give them college access opportunities that otherwise may not exist.
Upward Bound has had a long track record of positively impacting the lives of the students these programs serve, thus illustrated by the programs’ more than 50 years in existence and a recent total appropriation for all TRIO Programs that reached a historic high of $1.01 billion in fiscal year 2018 (Council on Opportunity in Education, 2018).
These programs are grant funded on a five-year cycle and the grant competition is highly competitive. This means that every five years, there is a possibility that an Upward
Bound Program that has been in existence for five or more years could lose its funding and its students could lose their support services. This is not only a blow to the students served, but also to the schools and communities that these programs serve as well. It would be in the best interest of the U.S. Government and the U.S. Department of
Education to permanently fund these programs as a supplement to struggling school systems in the U.S.
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Student recruitment. Many of the study participants credited trusted others— family members, peers, teachers, guidance counselors, etc.—with introducing them to
Upward Bound and encouraging them to get involved in the program. As a recruiting strategy, outreach to people who have a strong influence on the lives of students to provide them with information about the program could leverage the power of influence these trusted others have with students to attract potential first-generation college students to the program. Study participants recounted people close to them telling them about Upward Bound and encouraging them to get involved. These people included their older siblings and cousins, friends and teachers in their schools, parents and grandparents, guidance counselors, and other trusted others.
Information sessions about Upward Bound and its benefits to students for school personnel, including building leadership, teachers, athletic coaches, and other support staff would be beneficial in getting trusted others onboard who strongly influence students. Partnerships and collaborations with community-based organizations can help with recruiting, as well as social media campaigns informing the public about Upward
Bound. Finally, Upward Bound information sessions for a student’s entire family, rather than just the parents can build partnerships with a student’s family and increase the chances that younger siblings will also enroll in Upward Bound when they become of age.
Alumni connections. When I initially began reaching out to Upward Bound
Program Directors to solicit their alumni contact information for this study, it quickly became apparent that some program Directors were better connected to their program alumni than others. Alumni connections in Upward Bound and other TRIO Programs are
210 crucial because alumni success is a direct reflection of the impact of that program.
Alumni can, and should be called upon as guest speakers that can build social capital for current Upward Bound students. Their voices are those that have the power to persuade legislators to continue to fund and support TRIO. Alumni connections to Upward Bound and other TRIO Programs need to remain strong, regardless if there are changes in program leadership. As seen in this research study, alumni voices are the most powerful voices that can tell the story of TRIO Upward Bound and how it can potentially change the trajectory of a student’s entire life. If those stories are lost, a part of the history of these programs are lost.
Parental involvement. The Upward Bound Program is charged with preparing first-generation, low income high school students to enroll in postsecondary education and attain degrees of higher education. Along with the services the Upward Bound
Program provides, parental involvement is necessary for student success. As demonstrated in Fan and Williams (2010), and Ross (2016), parental involvement promotes academic success. Therefore, many Upward Bound Programs have parent groups to support the program in meeting its objectives. However, programming and curriculum that specifically focuses on how parents can create college-going cultures in their homes, along with funding from the Department of Education to specifically support these initiatives, would greatly benefit Upward Bound Programs and aid them in meeting their required objectives. The study participants’ narratives in this study demonstrated the power of parental advocacy. Therefore, this parent programming should also help parents to understand the power of advocacy on behalf of their children and provide specific examples of what parental advocacy can look like in various forms.
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Creating college-going cultures. The findings in this study present direct implications for practice as it relates to creating college-going cultures in the homes of students. Empirically grounded findings on the practices that play into creating college- going cultures in the homes of students can provide relevant insights for parents who have an expectation that their children pursue postsecondary education. Many of the practices described by the participants in the study can be implemented by parents, regardless of whether they have completed a college degree. Upward Bound personnel, as well as other education practitioners, can use the findings of this study to coach parents on how they create a home environment that is conducive to college-going. Many of these practices, such as reading with children and engaging with them in learning and cultural activities, can be started long before children ever enter school, giving them a head start on academic success (National Education Association, 2007). Moreover, parents can foster strong relationships with their children’s teachers and building leadership to work as partners in their children’s education process (Bronfenbrenner,
1979).
Although Upward Bound serves high school aged students, many of the practices for building a college-going culture are activities that can and should take place long before a student enters high school, i.e. encouraging students to read, researching schooling options for students, intentionally exposing students to a wealth of learning and cultural opportunities, and valuing education and making it a priority. The findings of the study suggest that the building of a college-going culture in a child’s home should begin early on in a child’s life, before they ever begin school so that the practices and lessons can be repeated and reinforced all throughout their upbringing. The study participants'
212 narratives include multiple examples of them engaging in these practices through intentional behaviors. They encouraged reading in their homes early on in their children’s lives. They made carefully calculated decisions about the best schooling options to meet their children’s needs. They purposefully exposed to their children to cultural and learning opportunities, such as plays, summer camps, and academic enrichment programs. They placed a high value on education and set expectations of high academic achievement for their children.
Many research studies detail the creating of college-going cultures in schools, such as Holland and Farmer-Hinton (2009) who found that students showed greater involvement in and access to college culture within schools when larger schools were broken down into smaller learning communities; Welton and Williams’ (2014) whose study investigated barriers to college-going cultures in a high minority, low-income high school; and Robinson and Roksa (2016) who found that students who regularly met with their guidance counselors were more likely to enroll in a four-year college. The study participants’ narratives provided insight into creating a college-going culture in a student’s home. This is pertinent, as the extant literature supports the idea that for a child, learning begins in the home (Public Agenda, 2010; Kiyama, 2011). Students whose parents regularly have school-related discussions with them and play an active role in their education process are more likely to enroll in college and attain a college degree because they have been regularly exposed to a college-going culture (Choy, Horn, Nuñez
& Chen, 2000). If parents are a child’s first teachers, it is imperative that they be equipped with the knowledge and supports necessary to create college-going cultures in their home.
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Implications for Policy
Federally funded TRIO Upward Bound Programs are only required to track program alumni for six years after high school graduation to learn whether or not they have earned an associate’s or baccalaureate degree. If students do not earn a degree within six years of graduating high school, the U.S. Department of Education deems that the Upward Bound Program did not meet its stated objective in those cases, and the program is no longer required to track the former program participants. Three of the participants in my study did not earn their degrees within six years of high school graduation, but did earn degrees later in life. Furthermore, they became gainfully employed and influenced their children to enroll in college and earn degrees. These participants credited the Upward Bound Program for their successes, even though they earned their degrees later in life. Upward Bound Program alumni, such as these three participants, are Upward Bound success stories despite the Department of Education’s view of them.
While the U.S. Department of Education requires that Upward Bound Program personnel submit Annual Performance Reports detailing the number of students earning degrees within six years of high school graduation, further tracking is necessary to see the long-term effects of Upward Bound. How many Upward Bound alumni have earned degrees beyond the six-year threshold currently set? And how many Upward Bound alumni earn advanced degrees within and beyond that threshold as well? I am in no way advocating for Upward Bound Directors to be responsible for this level of tracking. As an
Upward Bound Director, I can testify to the fact that we do not have the time to perform this level of tracking in addition to all of our current responsibilities and still effectively
214 run our programs. It would need to be done by an outside reporting agency. However, not performing this tracking negates an important aspect of the story of Upward Bound effectiveness and success.
The current measure of success for Upward Bound negates the accomplishments of those students who maybe only completed one or two years of college, or earned a certificate of completion in a program of study, which then allowed them to learn a trade and gain employment. With gaining employment, they provide for themselves and their families, they become tax payers, and they contribute to society. However, the current measure of success of Upward Bound would conclude that a student such as this was not successful, and that the Upward Bound Program did not meet its stated objectives with regard to that student. Upward Bound Directors are encouraged to seek out and serve the neediest of students. However, those students may not be capable of completing a degree program for a myriad of reasons. Earning some college credits may still change the trajectory of their lives and raise their socioeconomic status, accomplishing what the program was initially intended to do. Federal reporting structures and success measures should be revised to more accurately capture the complexity of contemporary student pathways, and by extension, the successes of individual programs. These revisions should be implemented at the federal level with supports in place, so that no additional burden for data collection and analysis is added to what is currently required at the program level.
Implications for Future Research
Further quantitative research is necessary to determine the number of Upward
Bound alumni who actually earn degrees in their lifetimes beyond those six years after
215 high school graduation. Currently, reporting of Upward Bound alumni degree attainment after those six years is purely anecdotal. Attewell and Lavin (2007) conducted a research study that tracked three generations of women over 30 years, examining whether open admission colleges in the City University of New York (CUNY) system promoted upward social mobility for those women. The researchers determined these women were more likely to be involved in their children’s education process, more likely to encourage their children to pursue higher education, and that their children were more likely to have higher test scores. Attewell and Lavin found, furthermore, that the children of those women were more likely to attain college degrees as well. Importantly, the findings showed that increased educational attainment among the original cohort’s children extended to the children of those women who graduated with degrees, but also to the children of those who attended college, but did not complete degrees. I believe that a similar study on Upward Bound alumni would yield interesting findings and shed light on the number of alumni who earn degrees beyond the six year tracking period. The narratives of my study participants alluded to Upward Bound having had a multi- generational effect, so tracking the number of descendants of these Upward Bound alumni who earn degrees would also be valuable.
As noted above, this research study focused solely on Upward Bound alumni who had participated in an Upward Bound Program in the State of Ohio. Further qualitative research is necessary to explore the Upward Bound Program experiences of program alumni in other parts of the country, and examine how those experiences influenced their creation of a college-going culture in their homes for their children. Moreover, because the majority of the participants in this study were African-American, findings could be
216 extended by further research focused on program alumni with other racial and ethnic identities.
As previously mentioned, the scope of this research study did not allow for hearing even a fraction of the stories of those who fit the study criteria in Ohio, let alone across the entire U.S. There are nine Upward Bound Programs in the State of Ohio which fit the criteria for inclusion in the study, and each of those long-running programs could possibly have hundreds, if not thousands of college graduates. Many of these alumni likely have college-enrolled or college-graduated children. Only four of those programs are represented in this study. Also, there are at least seven Upward Bound Programs in the State of Ohio hosted by 2-year colleges and community-based organizations that were not considered for this study. Many alumni of these programs may likewise have experiences to share from parenting college-enrolled or college-graduated children. A replication of the study with participants from other program sites and host institution types may therefore, yield useful findings as well.
Having been in existence for more than five decades, the TRIO Upward Bound
Program has shown itself to be a mainstay in the federally funded, anti-poverty program landscape in the broader collection of federal programs that have often been ephemeral in nature. The National Teacher Corps, Neighborhood Youth Corps, and Model Cities
Programs were all birthed out of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, just as
Upward Bound and TRIO Programs were (Regan, 2009; Eckert, 2011; Ligon, 2014; ASU
Library, n.d.). The National Teacher Corp provided teachers to high-poverty areas and trained teachers in urban education, but was replaced by block grants under the Education
Consolidation and Improvement Act of 1981 (Eckert, 2011). The Neighborhood Youth
217
Corps gave jobs to poor, urban youth to deter delinquency and encourage school attendance, but ended when President Nixon began dismantling War on Poverty
Programs in 1973 (Regan, 2009; ASU Library, n.d.). The Model Cities Program promoted urban development by providing funding to establish alternative forms of municipal leadership by Black urban leaders, but ended in the mid-70s because of the conservative backlash that followed the urban riots of the late 1960s (Ligon, 2014).
Birthed from the same initiative as the aforementioned programs, Upward Bound is still in existence and has grown from 17 programs serving 2061 students in 1965 to 967 programs serving 70,914 students (Greenleigh Associates Inc., 1970, as cited in Groutt,
2003; U.S. Department of Education, 2018). More qualitative research needs to be done to glean the best practices of these long-running Upward Bound Programs to gain a better understanding of how they educate and support students and why they have been successful for so long. Some of the participants in my study stated that the continuity of the program leadership—Program Directors who served in their roles for 10 years or longer—was a key component to the success of their Upward Bound Program, which had a direct impact on their personal success because of the relationships they had built with their program leadership. This information would be useful to the personnel of newer
Upward Bound Programs that are trying to find their footing to establish themselves as mainstays in their communities.
While this research study points to the successes of the Upward Bound Program, the reality is that not every Upward Bound Program is as successful as every other, and not every Upward Bound Program participant goes on to attain a college degree. A case study detailing one Upward Bound Program over two or more five-year grant cycles
218 would provide more insight into why some programs are successful and some are not; and why some students, despite receiving the extra support and motivation the program provides, do not enroll in postsecondary education or complete a college degree program.
A case study over two or more five-year grant cycles would allow researchers the opportunity to observe a cohort of students and document degree attainment within six years of high school graduation. The issues and hindrances first-generation, low-income students battle are multi-faceted. An in-depth case studies of individual programs extending across multiple grant-cycles would illuminate those issues and provide Upward
Bound practitioners with further insight into how to help their students overcome the changing and emerging challenges and barriers to higher education that they face.
Also of interest for further research is the impact of the media on college-going.
Many movies and television shows have been made about college life, allowing popular culture to shape public perception of the collegiate experience, leaving a lasting, although sometimes spurious, impression (Reynolds, 2014). However, few mainstream movies and television shows have been made about African-American college life and promoting college-going for African-Americans. Whites are often depicted as college students in movies and television shows. Popular movies and television shows depicting Whites in college include National Lampoon’s Animal House, Revenge of the Nerds, Legally
Blonde, Gilmore Girls and Community (Goodyear, 2017; Selter, 2017). However, the movie School Daze, and the television shows The Cosby Show and A Different World depicted African Americans in college on historically Black college campuses. These shows broke ground, bringing valid African-American experiences to light that were contrary to the ghetto, impoverished, criminal images of African-American life that were
219 generally shown in prior decades. The three study participants who were in high school during the late 1980s and early 1990s cited these shows as influencing them to attend historically Black colleges. I believe there is a greater story to be told about the influence of these shows on college-going. Further qualitative research is necessary to uncover those stories.
Conclusion
As a first-generation college student who now works as a TRIO Upward Bound practitioner, this research study continually put me in a place of deep reflection and introspection throughout the entire process. I saw myself in so many of the study participants, especially when it came to parenting and wanting the best for my own daughter. Like the study participants, I see myself being deliberate and intentional about the education experiences to which I expose her. Like the study participants, I have taught my daughter that a higher education is the way to secure her place in the American middle class, or higher, and that it is expected that she attain a college degree. And just like the participants in this study, I want to encourage my daughter to find her passions, then nurture those passions, and give her every opportunity to pursue them.
Although I am not an Upward Bound alumna, and although I grew up in a different state, I came to see that I have a great deal in common with the participants in this study. Earning a college degree has allowed me the privilege of moving up the socioeconomic ladder. It has afforded me the opportunity to move into a more affluent neighborhood and make decisions as the study participants did—a public school in an affluent neighborhood, private school in the city, magnet school? Like them, I encourage reading in my home, I send my daughter to camps during the summer to expose her to
220 potential future careers, and I regularly attend her school functions and sporting events.
And just like all of the participants in this study, I want the absolute best for my child. As a parent, like the study participants, and like all parents, I try to do the best for my daughter that I possibly can. However, after all of my experiences, all of my research, all of my higher education and attained degrees, I am still a first-generation college student.
Therefore, I often wonder if I am doing enough for my daughter, or if there is more I could, or should be doing for her to prepare her for success in college and beyond. I do all that I know to do as a mother and a college access professional to create that college- going culture in my home and provide the necessary guidance. However, I always wonder if what I am doing is enough.
All children deserve access to quality education and the opportunity to pursue postsecondary education, if they should so choose, regardless of their socioeconomic status. Upward Bound creates pathways to college access for first-generation, low- income students and has done so since 1965 (U.S. Department of Education, 2015a;
Groutt, 2003a; Groutt, 2003b). This research study presents fourteen rich, contextualized examples of the work the Upward Bound Program does and the impact the program can potentially have on the lives of the students it serves. More students need access to the services Upward Bound provides.
The stories shared by the study participants serve to give Upward Bound Program practitioners deep insight into the practices that were most impactful and the experiences that stick in the minds of Upward Bound alumni decades after their participation in the program. The stories also serve to illuminate which practices the study participants felt were valuable enough to pass onto their children. I hope the findings in this study can
221 help us, as Upward Bound Practitioners, generate creative ideas in developing best practices in serving our students as we create pathways for them to college access and degree attainment. Serving students in this manner gives us a unique way to positively impact social justice, and make a difference in the lives of young people
222
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APPENDIX A
Documentation of Data Collection and Analysis
Interview Protocol
Section I: Childhood and Upbringing 1. Please tell me about your childhood and upbringing. 2. What were your parents’ and other family members’ attitudes toward education? What, if any, were messages you heard about education in your household? 3. Please tell me about your experiences in school. Did you enjoy school? What extracurricular activities were you involved in? Did you have a favorite teacher—who and why? 4. As a kid, what were your perceptions of college? Was college something you thought about prior to attending Upward Bound? What were your ideas of what you thought college would be like? 5. As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? How does that compare to what you do now?
Section 2: Upward Bound Program Experiences 1. Can you tell me about your Upward Bound experience? How did you get enrolled in the program? What grade were you in when you started participation? Did you participate in the Bridge Program? 2. Think about some of the lessons or experiences you gained through Upward Bound that you feel had a lasting impact on your life. Could you share some of the ones you felt were most valuable? 3. How did your perception of attending college change, if at all, during your participation in Upward Bound? 4. What are some of the field trips and college campus visits you remember taking with the Upward Bound Program? Can you tell me more about those experiences? 5. What career path did you end up following? Did Upward Bound influence this career path? And if so, how?
Section 3: Childrearing Experiences 1. Please tell me about the school(s) your child attends/attended in elementary, middle, and high school; and how did you arrive at the decision for them to attend those schools? 2. Can you describe the relationship you had with your kids’ school and school personnel when they were growing up? 3. What were some of the attitudes and values about education that you purposely imparted into your children? How do these message compare to what you heard from your family growing up?
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4. Please explain how homework was handled in your household for your children. Were there routines? Were you able to offer homework help? How did this compare to how homework was handled for you in your parents’ household? 5. What was the process like in terms of college selection and deciding which college your child(ren) would ultimately attend? How did this process compare to your own selection and decision process?
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Invitation to Participate Form
INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE IN RESEARCH Surveys and Interviews
Research Project Title: Creating College-Going Cultures for our Children: Narratives of TRIO
Upward Bound Program Alumni
You have been asked to participate in a research project conducted by Ieesha Ramsey from the University of Dayton, in the Department of Educational Leadership.
The purpose of the project is: To investigate the experiences of TRIO Upward Bound Program alumni to learn if and how those experiences influenced how the alumni parented their continuing-generation children in terms of education and college access; to examine if the experiences program alumni had during their participation in Upward Bound influenced the creating of a college-going culture in their homes and how.
You should read the information below, and ask questions about anything you do not understand, before deciding whether or not to participate.
• Your participation in this research is voluntary. You have the right not to answer any question and to stop participating at any time for any reason. Answering the questions will take about 60 minutes.
• You will not be compensated for your participation.
• All of the information you tell us will be confidential.
• If this is a recorded interview, only the researcher and faculty advisor will have access to the recording and it will be kept in a secure place.
• If this is a written or online survey, only the researcher and faculty advisor will have access to your responses. If you are participating in an online survey: We will not collect identifying information, but we cannot guarantee the security of the computer you use or the security of data transfer between that computer and our data collection point. We urge you to consider this carefully when responding to these questions.
• I understand that I am ONLY eligible to participate if I am over the age of 18.
Please contact the following investigators with any questions or concerns:
Ms. Ieesha Ramsey, [email protected], (937) 229-4517
Dr. Mary Ziskin, [email protected], (937) 229-3287
If you feel you have been treated unfairly, or you have questions regarding your rights as a research participant, you may contact Candise Powell, J.D., Chair of the Institutional Review Board at the University of Dayton, [email protected]; Phone: (937) 229-3515.
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List of Codes
Academic ability Mentorship, role models o average student, average Messages about college different effort for kids o high performing student Neighborhood schools ACT, SAT testing Parental education expectations Advocacy for child’s education o expectation of participant Black college or HBCU upon their child Career Aspirations o expectation of Career, degree attainment participant’s parents o Low career aspirations Parental guidance on college, Change in perception major selection o college--change in Parental, family support perception Participant left college before o self--change in perception graduation Child school type Predominantly White institution o Charter school or PWI o Private school Program of Study o Public school Race or Being Black College environment o Black environment College experience o Predominantly White College-going culture environment Cultural capital Read or Reading Degree attainment later in life Resiliency Financial aid Rise in socioeconomic status, First-generation upward mobility Graduate school School selection Homework help by participants, Self reflected in educators, parents school Kids’ educational opportunities Self-advocacy Low income Social capital Lowered expectations of Spouse’s role in kids’ education participant Upward Bound experience Loyalty, gratitude to Upward Upward Bound Olympics Bound Worked for Upward Bound Marginalization Media influence on education Memorable quotes
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Coding Screenshots
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Study Participant Characteristics Table
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APPENDIX B
Reflexive Journal
10/2/2018
I am not sure if I am allowed to start reflexive journaling yet, as I am still working on proposal edits and have not yet defended said proposal. However, I have thoughts about my research and I need to put them on paper before I forget them.
I am still working on Chapter 2 edits. They are the vex on my life...all these edits are. I am a ‘One and done’ kind of girl, so I know ALL of the editing that needs to go into the whole of this dissertation process with be my Achilles heel, so to speak.
However, I was reflecting back to when I first had the epiphany of what my dissertation topic would be. I was driving into work on a cold morning...thinking. I remember Toni
Glasscoe, a former supervisor of mine, talking about college-going cultures when I was working at Lansing Community College. And of course, Upward Bound has always been a love of mine.
It was November 5, 2015. How do I remember that? I no longer trust my memory, so I use apps on my phone to take notes. I started doing that back in 2013. Back then, it was the Notes app on my iPhone. Now, I use Google Keep. My phone is always with me, as is my ability to take notes when I need to. That was during Fall semester 2015. I was also taking Dr. Mary Ziskin’s Qualitative Research course. Therefore, qualitative
252 research questions were swirling around in my mind.
After I had asked Dr. Ruth Thompson-Miller to serve on my dissertation committee back during Spring semester 2015, she invited me to meet with her so we could discuss my research interests. It was almost as if she were appalled that I could not yet articulate my research interests. She challenged me in the first meeting to begin brainstorming and she notated the topics that came up. One of the most prominent topics that came up was college access, and then barriers to college access. Little did I know at the time that this would fuel a section in my Chapter 1. At the conclusion of that meeting, we scheduled to meet again in two weeks and she said that I had better have a topic hammered down the next time we met.
I love a good challenge. And although, the topic was not completely hammered down, I knew that I had wanted to do something dealing with first-generation college students. However, that topic felt so cliche’. EVERYBODY and their mama had already studied that. I knew I needed something different; something that would add to the body of literature—an angle per se.
Upward Bound Program student experiences came to mind, but I was pretty sure that that had already been studied to death as well. My Master’s thesis had been a quantitative study exploring the perceived effect of the Wittenberg University Upward
Bound Program on its former participants. My continued connections to the leadership there made me confident in my ability to gain access to those former participants again if necessary. But I still needed something more ground breaking; something that had not already been done a million times and in a million different forms.
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My mind kept going back to Toni Glasscoe’s comments on college-going culture.
It made me reflect on my own upbringing and the messages I received about education and college while growing up. My mother and Mama Gladys (my aunt/2nd mother) were constantly hitting me with “When you go to college.” “College this...College that.” I knew early on that the expectation was that I would attend college after high school.
Academic excellence was stressed in my household. But because I was first-generation, there were pieces of that message missing...pieces that my mother did not know she was supposed to share because she and my aunt had not completed baccalaureate degrees
(both had earned associates degrees). I turned out ok, but if those pieces had been filled in, my collegiate experience would have been far more beneficial...and just plain easier.
So, on that fateful drive into work that cool, sunny morning, the thoughts of
Upward Bound and college-going culture collided. I remember taking the note via voice dictation on my iPhone 5 while sitting at the light of the I-75 exit ramp, just before turning right onto Edwin C. Moses Blvd. The original research question was:
“How did their experiences in the Wittenberg University Upward Bound Program shape the way that they created college-going cultures in their own homes for their own children?”
It was like “boom.” I was moved to tears by the profoundness of the idea (profound only in my mind). What if the Upward Bound Program, whose purpose is to introduce high school kids to college-going, also had an effect on their children? We already know from research that students who go to college are more likely to have offspring that attend
254 college. But Upward Bound is an intervention for kids whose parents have not completed college. What if that intervention has a multi-generational effect?
I’ve been taught that qualitative research is supposed to generate theory, while quantitative research tests theories. Ever since starting this doctoral journey, I have always been partial to qualitative research. However, I have never felt it within my power to generate any type of theory. I am just not that powerful. I have felt that way….until today.
If I had to come up with one theory that might emerge from my research right now, it would be that the Upward Bound Program has a multi-generational effect on its participants. Students who participate in Upward Bound in high school and earn baccalaureate degrees, then use the college access information learned as high school students to create college-going cultures for their own children.
12/17/2018
This weekend, I started building my interview protocol so that it can be included with the final draft of my proposal. The whole idea of building this protocol makes me a little nervous—I only get one shot to ask all the pertinent questions. And my failure to ask the right questions, or my improper communication of questions can cause me to not get the information I am truly searching for. A participant’s response is only as good as the question asked.
Saturday night during my daughter’s swim meet, I was working on building the final section of the protocol. I feel it is really important to get at the ideas and values about education that were taught to the participants, as well as the ideas and values that the participants taught to their children. Were they the same? Different? Did Upward
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Bound influence what they taught their children, as opposed to what they were taught? I believe this is an important aspect of what the culture in the home was in terms of college-going.
On the ride into work this morning, I thought about some of the ideas and values about education my mother and other family members taught me. The one that stands out the most prominently in my mind is my mother telling me to get my education—”It’s the one thing that no one can take from you,” she would say. I was also taught that I had to be twice as good and work twice as hard as the White man because I was a double minority—I am Black. And I am a woman. I have never felt discrimination based on my gender, but I have experienced it many times based on my race. I was taught that I had to be articulate because the expectation would be that I am not, based on the color of my skin alone. I was also taught that I would need to be tough and smart—because the world would continually knock me around and try to play me for stupid.
My extended family constantly doted on me for being smart and doing well in school. They always made me feel like smart and hardworking were the things to be. My
Uncle Gene would give me $5 for every ‘A’ I got on my report card, but he had to actually see the report card to pay out. Therefore, I always made sure I had my report card with me when we visited family in Detroit. My older cousins would brag to their friends about how smart I was and would be like “She’s going to be a doctor or a lawyer when she grows up.” A doctor….or a lawyer. Those were honestly the only two career paths I heard about growing up. I couldn’t stand the sight of blood, so lawyer it was.
I can remember hearing my family members talk about working for the post office or working for the car assembly plants as being “good jobs.” But I also remember
256 them never trying to push me toward those “good jobs.” The expectation was that I was to go to college because I was smart. As an adult, I did a little research on those “good jobs” and realized that they were good jobs for people who only held a high school diploma, as the pay was lower than most jobs that required a college degree, but much better than minimum wage. Someone who worked on the assembly line back in the 1980s when I was growing up often made as much, if not more money than folks who worked in jobs that required a bachelor's degree. Sadly, those jobs are gone now, as assembly line workers are often hired in at much lower hourly wages now. My uncles made good livings working those assembly line jobs. They owned homes, drove Cadillacs, and paid for their children to attend college off of those assembly line jobs.
Because I am an only child, I often consider my cousins to be my siblings. I am not sure if those same messages about education were passed on to my cousins, but I assume that they were. One interesting dynamic to explore is the big Chrysler lay-off of
1979. My mother and both of my uncles had been laid off work during that time (that lay- off forced my mother into a different job, working for the State of Michigan from which she would retire after 20 years of service, prompting us to relocate to Lansing from
Detroit. My uncles were later called back and would retire from Chrysler). In terms of age, I had cousins who were in high school when I was born, and cousins who were much younger than me—I was kind of born in a ‘gap’ so to speak. I wonder if my older cousins were taught that college was optional—they could always get jobs in the car plants if they needed to. Of six of my very close older cousins, four of them attended college, but only two of them earned bachelor’s degrees, finishing as adult learners. These six cousins’ lives parallelled the street pharmaceutical drug explosion in America’s urban areas, of
257 which Detroit was no different. Two of them sold drugs, and three of them became drug addicts, one of which passed away from an overdose. Only one of them, my cousin Mary, has a career and is now only a few years from retirement. She is the oldest of all of us.
She was the cousin I always aspired to be like, as she was independent and always had a good job. As adults, she has become the cousin I am closest to. She is truly more like a big sister than an older cousin.
My cousins and I were all raised by the same people—my grandmother Rebecca, aunts Gladys and Sarah, and my mother, Bettye. Therefore, I always assume that they heard the same messages I heard about education and its value. However, that’s a different research topic for a different dissertation. My Aunt Sarah returned to school as an adult to earn her credentials as a registered nurse. My Aunt Gladys worked at
Highland Park Community College in the counseling office—she was my connection to college access information. My mother worked for the State of Michigan doing audits on low-income housing developments. These were the examples that I saw—hardworking, professional Black women who had been resilient following divorces, and worked hard to support their families. A child can only be what they see. And that’s what I saw growing up. However, the prevailing attitude was that I needed to do better than they had done.
And I was taught that getting a college education was the way to do it.
2/7/2019
My research proposal was successfully defended on December 12, 2018. After that, the University’s semester ended and things shut down for the holidays. It was a nice break, but much of it was spent cooling my heels. Once the Spring semester started I submitted for IRB approval and received that yesterday. In the meantime and in the
258 months leading up to this moment, I had been connecting with my TRIO colleagues at the four main institutions that I wanted to target initially to solicit names of potential participants: Wittenberg, University of Cincinnati, Central State, and Baldwin Wallace. I also reached out to the Director at the University of Toledo, but have not received a response from her. It has been a week, so I will follow up later today.
One thing I quickly learned is that some programs keep in better touch and have a stronger alumni base than others. Wittenberg is a prime example. The former Director there was able to provide me with 12 names, while Baldwin Wallace gave me two. I saw the Director of Central State’s program earlier this week for a meeting on a different topic and he informed me that he was not really connected with many alumni, but gave me the name of one that he is connected to. I hope I can do some snowballing with this guy and get a few more of his Central State UB peers onboard. But I must share that
Central State lost their grant funding in 2004 and was refunded in 2008. At that time, a new Director was hired. Although he has been onboard there for the last ten years, he is not connected to the older alumni. I have reached out to the woman that was Director prior to him. She posted in their alumni group, but I do not believe there have been any responses. I will do the same myself.
I am working really hard to try to include more voices than just Wittenberg
University Upward Bound alumni. This all, coincidentally, coincides with the work of the committee that I am currently co-chairing for Ohio TRIO, our state professional association. The charge of our committee is to work to start a state-wide alumni association and also initiate some type of alumni event. If this work had already been
259 done, my dissertation life would be SO much easier! But, nope...It is up to me to try and make it happen...because it is important work.
2/8/2019
I am SUPER excited about a married couple from Wittenberg’s Upward Bound
Program who have both agreed to be interviewed. They were both participants in the program before I worked there and I remember the Director raving about them having been high school sweethearts who were both involved in the program, had gotten married, and both been very successful in meeting their college and career goals. I hadn’t given much thought to the possibility of interviewing a husband and wife duo, until now.
Of course they were raised by different families, so I expect their stories to be individual in that regard. It will be interesting to hear how each conceptualizes their Upward Bound experiences. It will also be interesting to hear their philosophies on how they raised their kids and if they are similar, different, etc. I can’t wait to hear their stories! Their case is going to push my writing skills because I will have to figure out how to treat them as separate cases, while their experiences in co-parenting will force me to treat them as a single case.
2/10/2019
After having sent out email invites to 14 potential participants, and only having gotten 4 affirmative responses (mind you, they all hit back nearly right away, some within the hour of my sending, so I was shocked, amazed, and elated!), my anxiety kicked in and I started brainstorming other ways to reach these Upward Bound Program alumni. Yesterday, I posted the invitation in both the Central State and Wittenberg
Upward Bound alumni Facebook groups. I got one response from that effort so far—from
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Wittenberg. I have my first interview today from my first email outreach effort, with others scheduled for tomorrow and Wednesday. I will more than likely have two others next week. I will phone the folks I emailed, but did not get responses from either tomorrow or Tuesday (I have a head cold right now that has the victory over me in this moment, so I am trying to pace things and not do too much right now, so as to allow myself time to recuperate). In the meantime, I am going to skim Research Interviewing:
Context and Narrative by Elliot G. Mischler (1986) until I fall back asleep.
And before I could log off, I got another response from a UB alum who is willing to participant. This one is from Baldwin Wallace, so I am super excited. One of the things that I try to get my students to realize is that while they are having their own Upward
Bound experiences here at the University of Dayton, other students like them are also having Upward Bound experiences all over Ohio and the U.S. It will be exciting to hear from someone other than Wittenberg alums and compare their lived experiences to those who did Upward Bound at Wittenberg.
2/13/2019
Tonight I interviewed my first study participant. I realized that I survived three grueling years of coursework and 14 hours of craptacular comprehensive exams...all to get to this point. I LOVED hearing the participant’s story! I was very nervous about making sure that I got all of the information from him that I needed. His voice dominated the air and many of the questions were organically answered as he shared his story.
Hearing his story helped to reaffirm why I do the work that I do. He helped to recharge my batteries, as I am coming off of being sick with a head cold/sinus infection for nearly a week and having to leave to go out of town tomorrow to take a group of students to the
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Ohio TRIO Student Leadership Conference. He solidified the fact, in my mind and heart, that this program changes the lives of its participants for the better. And it not only changes the lives of the participants—it also impacts the lives of the participants’ offspring.
I was working to try and get the voices of more than just Wittenberg Upward
Bound alumni included in my research study, but that is proving to be more difficult than expected. The most solid leads for study participants came from Eddie Chambers, former
Director with Wittenberg’s Upward Bound Program. And I just had an epiphany! Dr.
Joseph D. Lewis (He was one of my most beloved mentors. I call him Doc) was the long time Director of Central State’s Upward Bound Program, but he has since passed away. I was just thinking that I wish Doc was still here. He would have ALL of the connections to his former Central State Upward Bound participants. He would have sent me a list even longer than Eddie’s. My epiphany is that I should post my solicitation for study participants on Dr. Lewis’s in Memorandum Facebook page and see if I get any bites.
Many of his former students are probably connected to that page. The current Director and recent past Director do not seem to be very well connected to the older alumni that I am seeking. Honestly, the only Direct who truly seems to be is Eddie Chambers—but that is probably because he was Director of Wittenberg’s program for 40 years, so he has the history of having worked with the students in that program since 1975.
Another interesting dynamic that I see emerging here is the age ranges of the participants. The participant I interviewed today was active in Upward Bound in the late
60s. A couple of the others were active in the late 80s. The participant I interviewed today had sons in their 40s who were all college graduates, whereas the younger
262 participants’ kids are currently enrolled in college. It will be interesting to see if there are differences in how they recall creating the college-going cultures in their homes; especially if they still have younger kids living in the home.
Also, the current male to female ratio is of interest to mention as well. Right now,
I have seven alumni who have agreed to participate. Four of them are males and three of them are female. I am not sure what I expected going into this, but I do not think I expected the ratio to be so evenly split down the middle. I can’t wait to get them all interviewed and see if anything can be observed about fathers’ roles verses mothers’ roles. The participant I interviewed tonight kind of alluded to how his wife was a stay at home mother and volunteered so much at the school with the kids, he joked that they needed to put her on payroll. In his recollection, he remembered his wife being the one who was always involved with the kids and their school functions, but photos proved that he was also there for the kids, not just working to support the family, as he recalled. I can’t wait to see how all of this unfolds.
2/18/2019
So I’m three interviews in at this point. One of the things that I have noticed about my protocol is that after I ask that first question: “Please tell me about your childhood and upbringing,” if I just let them speak, they answer the majority of the questions in my first section. After allowing them to speak, they will often answer the questions in the first section and then all I have to do is spot check to ensure that each question has been answered. If I find holes, it’s been very easy to ask the missed questions as supplemental questions. They often share far more than what I ask. And the first section will often flow seamlessly into the second session, which is about their Upward Bound experiences. This
263 section is another one that, if I simply ask the first question or two and then let them talk, they will generally hit all the other questions. I am finding that the only section that really needs a conscious segway is the last section about parenting. I think that the Upward
Bound experience is seen by the study participants as being a part of their childhood experiences. Therefore, the two sections flow together, and the third section takes more prompting. My interviews are running right around an hour each in time.
Overall, I think the protocol is working well for me and it is soliciting the information that I am hoping to gather. I am started to see the stark differences between the first-gen parents wanting the best for their kids and encouraging them to do Upward
Bound because they know it is a positive experience; but not truly realizing how the program could potentially impact their lives...contrasted with the intentionality of how the Upward Bound alumni selected their children’s schools and learning opportunities all the way through to college. Each of the three participants that I’ve interviewed so far has done an amazing job of putting their experiences in the program into perspective as to its impact on their lives. There have been moments during the interviews where I have had to check my emotions because they have been so moving.
One other dynamic that was a bit unexpected, yet makes perfect sense is the shift from neighborhood schools to school of choice. The three participants that I’ve interviewed so far have all been from Springfield, Ohio, a small city of less than 60,000.
This definitely has a bearing on their lived experiences. All three have expressed having gone to their neighborhood schools. The (Khalil and Nicole) Davis’s interviews were of particular interest because Nicole expresses how she felt supported as an African
American student who attended schools that had high levels of African American
264 leadership in the building. She developed an affinity for those types of environments, as they provided the support she felt was pertinent toward her academic success. Khalil lived on a different side of town and went to schools where he did not see himself reflected in his building leadership. Khalil did not initially have the same affinity for educational systems where Blacks played a large role in the leadership. Nicole expressed that her affinity rubbed off on him and strongly influenced their decision to push their oldest son toward enrollment at an HBCU; especially after Khalil had the opportunity to experience Morehouse College for their nephew’s graduation. The other interesting fact was that neither Davis was especially fond of their undergraduate experience at a Big 10,
Predominantly White Institution. They both expressed not necessarily feeling a part of the campus environment there.
I spent quite a bit of time transcribing the first interview yesterday. I have two more that need transcription, and two more scheduled (tonight and tomorrow). At this point, I have three more who have agreed to participate, but have not yet been scheduled.
I’m working on it. My next move this week is to start calling the folks I’ve emailed, yet gotten no response. Twelve to 15 cases feels like the impossible dream right now...but at the same time, I never thought I’d get to the point where I am right now (8 who have agreed, 2 interviews on my calendar this week, and 3 already completed).
2/20/2019
I have to celebrate just a little today because I was starting to get very frustrated with recruiting participants. As I had mentioned before. Many of the Upward Bound
Directors who had promised to assist with providing contacts for eligible participants had overestimated their connections to their program alumni. With the exception of
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Wittenberg, most were only able to provide one or two; and all of those had not panned out. The response from the Wittenberg alumni has been overwhelming, some of them saying, “I’d do anything for Upward Bound. I’m more than happy to share my story.”
What changed things was that I found time during my lunch hour yesterday to do follow-up calls to the emails I had sent out on February 7th. Three of those folks apologized profusely for not having gotten back to me, as they had intended to, but got busy. All of those folks got scheduled. The snowball sampling finally yielded a participant, as someone contacted me after having heard from the first participant that I had interviewed that I was looking for others to interview. I was able to get her scheduled. So, as of today, I have conducted five interviews, I have five scheduled, and I have three folks who have agreed, but have not yet scheduled. Also, the participant I scheduled last night who was referred from the first participant says she will pass the info along to a two others she knows who may want to participate. The ball is definitely rolling, and where I was starting to become very concerned about not being able to get the 12-15 study participants I had indicated in my proposal, it is looking very likely that it will happen.
I originally had the timeline of trying to gather all data within the month of
February, but it looks now that this may seep into the first and even second week of
March. I am meeting with my Chair next week Thursday to discuss a realistic timeline, as
I plan to graduate in December, and the nature of my professional job is that I will lose eight weeks this summer to our Summer Academy (I don’t just study Upward Bound. As an Upward Bound Director, I live the life of Upward Bound as well). It is not that I won’t get any work done during the Summer program, it is just that my work days will be
266 longer, so it will limit how much time in the evenings I will have to dedicate toward dissertation writing. My weekends usually end up being the times when I get the most work done. Another wrench in my game is that my Program Specialist (second in command) will be on maternity leave throughout the entire Summer Academy. While I will have some assistance from my Program Assistant stepping up, a lot of the responsibility of supervising residential staff and the day-to-day with the students will fall on me. I felt it a good idea to meet with my chair to hash out what she thinks is a realistic timeline and to discuss deadlines so that I can get everything done and make December graduation a reality.
Tomorrow, I will interview my first study participant who was not a part of
Wittenberg University’s Upward Bound Program. Full disclosure—this participant is someone I know through my undergraduate alumni association. We have participated in alumni events where we have spoken to students together. Therefore, I know parts of his story and felt that his voice was definitely one that I wanted to include in my study. He, unlike the Wittenberg participants, is from a major city and not a small town. I am interested to see how this impacts my study. The three that I have yet to schedule are all outside of Wittenberg, so I am anxious to hear from them as well.
One last thought—transcription. I would like to transcribe all of my interviews myself, as this will allow me to become more familiar with my data and encourage further reflection on that data. However, I feel like it is taking me entirely too long to get through each interview. I have interviewed five people. I am currently transcribing interview number 2. It really means a lot to me to be able to transcribe my own interviews, but if it starts to slow up the process too much, I will use Trint. Many of my
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Ph.D. Facebook group friends have raved about Trint. I do have some free time on
Saturday and Sunday of this week that I plan to devote to transcribing, so we’ll see if I am able to make a significant dent in the stack. This weekend will give me a good gauge of whether or not I will be able to get everything transcribed in a timely manner.
I reached out to one of the Assistant Deans here in the School of Education and
Health Sciences to see if there had been any headway on us getting a license for a qualitative data analysis program. Some of the faculty members had voiced concern, as had students doing research—We have access to SPSS, but what about those of us who are conducting qualitative research? Of course, there have been delays, so I am going to just purchase the N*vivo license for Mac. It is $85 and it is a 2-year license, which is more than long enough for what I need. There used to be a demo you could do, but it is no longer available. It has been a few years since I used N*vivo and that was probably a watered down version, since it was a trial version. I am anxious to make sure that I utilize it properly and learn all of the functions to get the most support in analyzing my data. I am not really pressed about the School of Ed getting the license because it would more than likely be a PC license, which would trap me into only using my work desktop, or stealing my daughter’s HP laptop for my own use. I would rather use my Mac laptop for everything. I can sacrifice $85 for the cause!
2/21/19
I am not having a good transcription experience. Where I feel like I rocked it out in the transcription department when I was doing analysis in the Qualitative Research class (I even transcribed one interview for a friend), I feel like I am making no headway.
I am still trying to get through interview number two. I don’t feel like progress is being
268 made, yet I have another interview scheduled for tonight, one for Saturday and three next week. I plan to use my weekend study time to really get into the transcription, but I still fear that even then, it won’t be enough time (that might just be my anxiety, though—real talk).
Out of desperation last night, I decided to use Descript.com. A Ph.D. student who was in the cohort ahead of me raved about it. I bumped the pricing of that up against
Trint, another transcription service I saw many of my Facebook Ph.D. group friends had used and raved about as well. Descript was cheaper and my budget is a little slim right now, so I went with that one on interview number three. I am now trying to decide if transcribing the interviews myself is more time effective, or if using Descript and then making the corrections is more time effective. I will admit that I was a bit frustrated with it last night, but I also believe that my expectations were unrealistic. One positive that I do see in using Descript is this—I had wanted to do my own transcribing so that I would have the opportunity to spend more time with my data, so as to have a deeper analysis experience. I found last night that in making the corrections in Descript, it is allowing me that same closeness and reflection on the data that I would have if I were transcribing myself. Using Descript is just as hands-on a self-transcribing. I say all of this to say that I am greatly enjoying the interview process...the transcription process—not so much.
Interview number 3 is with a woman I am calling Nicole Davis. She is married to the man I am calling Khalil Davis, whom I interviewed just before her. They are the husband/wife couple I mentioned earlier. I expected their stories to be very similar, but was blown away by how each conceptualized their experiences differently. And although raised in the same city, they were both raised on different sides of town, each area having
269 its own racial make-up. Khalil grew up on a mostly White side of town, while Nicole grew up on the mostly Black side of town. She talked about how Black female role models in her middle school played a large role in encouraging her to pursue greater challenges, such as enrolling in Advanced Placement courses when she got to high school. She describes these women as “other mothers” and “aunties” at her middle school. She then talks about how she and her husband compared their experiences and how he was not able to get moved into an advanced Science class at his predominantly
White high school, even though his grades were better than hers and his mother went up to the school to advocate for him.
In my mind, this exemplifies how lower expectations are often set for students from underrepresented populations when they attend predominantly White schools. As
African American parents, we send our kids to these predominantly White schools because we want something better for them than what we had, not realizing that they may fall victim to marginalization by having their academic talents overlooked, and having lower expectations set for them. Khalil was a stellar scholar-athlete who earned straight
A’s. It seems to me that some of the school personnel in his building may have only seen him as an athlete because of the color of his skin. However, I cannot negate the intersectionality of gender with race. Girls are often expected to be the scholars, while boys are expected to be the athletes. Khalil and Nicole were both, however it seems that only Nicole was esteemed as a scholar by the personnel in her school building. She mentions two women who were influential in encouraging her to get involved in experiences she saw as pivotal. One suggested she do AP, while the other suggested she do Upward Bound. Both were Black women. Khalil does not really mention any Black
270 male role models who played a similar role. He only mentions his on-going feuds and power struggles with the Upward Bound Director who was also a Black man. He later goes on to say that he was a very stubborn kid who did not realize at the time what the
Upward Bound Director was trying to do for him. He says that he later went back and apologized to him for being so difficult.
So I have to ponder the question—if this type of marginalization happened to a kid like Khalil who later went on to earn a Bachelor’s in Engineering and an MBA from
Northwestern University, how many others does it happen to on a regular basis? And what can we learn about the types of support Nicole reported experiencing in her middle school environment? My interpretation is that she saw women in leadership roles who looked like her and could relate to her culturally. They also saw her value, worth, and potential as a student, which was the opposite of the implicit bias Khalil reported experiencing.
2/22/19
Interview number 6 happened yesterday. This was someone that I actually know in my real life, so I kind of knew his story...but of course I learned quite a bit from the interview that I did not already know. At the end of the interview, during casual conversation he said, “So are all of us saying the same thing?” I told him, “No. I haven’t reached the point of saturation yet...where I’m starting to hear the same things from people. All of you have brought a very interesting perspective about Upward Bound and your parenting experiences. And that was 100% true.
I am going to call my friend Xavier Evans. Xavier was the first participant who was not from Springfield. He grew up in the projects of Cincinnati, so his perspective
271 was just a little bit different than the others I have interviewed so far. One of the things that stands out in my mind after speaking to him is the need for young Black children to see themselves positively reflected in the media, particularly in TV. Xavier says that because he saw the Huxtables on Bill Cosby’s The Cosby Show, he aspired to be a doctor and then a lawyer. And Bill Cosby’s A Different World made going to college, but specifically attending a Black college, the thing to do. These images are missing on television now. The only semblance we have today is the TV show Black-ish and its spinoff, Grown-ish (although Zoey doesn’t attend an HBCU). However, I don’t believe these two shows have garnered the popularity that Cosby’s shows had gained back in the late 80s and early 90s. I can remember a girl I went to daycare with in elementary school saying that The Cosby Show was her family show and her family gathered around the TV together each week to watch it together. I don’t remember my mother and me watching it together—both of us were introverts, so we watched separately in our own rooms...but we watched it each week, never missing an episode.
The rise in socioeconomic status played out as a theme again in this interview, but differently than in Khalil Davis’s interview. Khalil talked about not knowing that Black people had money until he went to Chicago and saw Hyde Park and Muhammad Ali’s home. Xavier talked about the time when he was in law school in New York when he realized that all of his peers had gone to Ivy League schools and he inquired as to how that was possible. How had he never heard that there was a whole separate process or culture to being accepted to an Ivy. Up to that point, he had thought that being accepted to college was based on making application and having good grades and ACT/SAT scores. His peers talked about having had interviews at their schools—because their
272 schools were feeder schools. He then did the research for his daughter to determine where these feeder schools were. They were mostly in affluent neighborhoods, and so therefore, he moved into one of these affluent neighborhoods which had a feeder school so that his daughter could have the chance to compete for the Ivies, if that was her desire. He started this on the elementary school level. This ‘feeder school’ concept was news to me as well.
But all of this demonstrates how moving up the socioeconomic ladder can afford parents the opportunity to get their kids into more selective colleges.
Another theme that I saw repeated was when I tried to do a little snowball sampling and asked Xavier if he had any classmates who might be interested. He mentioned one and said he would forward the research study information. I then asked him if he knew an alum of his Upward Bound Program that I had been trying to reach. He said yes—they were the same year. His comment (jokingly, but truthfully), “How dare he not call you back to do the interview? We owe everything to Upward Bound.” Once again, it was that same sense of pride and gratitude that Angela Roe had expressed when she said, “I would do anything for Upward Bound” when I thanked her for taking the time to talk to me.
2/25/2019
I finally finished transcribing the Davis’ interviews. The theme of social capital jumped out at me toward the end of both Khalil and Nicole’s interviews. Khalil started talking about the social networks he’d built while in school at Northwestern. He mentioned that people lauded him for attending Northwestern and talked about how attending a school like that would give him a larger, richer social network than if he had attended an HBCU. He says that that was not the case for him because the majority of his
273 social contacts ended up being African American, and therefore, he could have made just as valuable contacts had he had attended an HBCU. Khalil talked about how when he was working on Wall Street, he was inundated by interns from Morehouse and Howard, whereas, he did not have any knowledge of Wall Street during his undergraduate experience at Northwestern.
Nicole talks about their social circle of friends now who are mostly African
American, but are all professionals in their own lives. She states that many of these professionals have talked to their kids about college and their career fields. This is a prime example of the social capital that Khalil and Nicole built through their college attendance, being passed down to their own children, and their children reaping the benefits of that capital. Although I have not transcribed Xavier Evan’s interview just yet, he talks about how the guest speakers he heard from in Upward Bound impacted his life.
This depicts social capital being built for him through the Upward Bound Program, where his family had been unable to pass that type of social capital down to him (although there were able to pass down other forms of capital).
2/27/2019
Up to this point, all of the study participants I have interviewed have identified racially as African American. Last night, I interviewed a woman I will call Janet
Robinson. Janet identifies as White and talked about her Upward Bound experiences in relation to the tense racial climate of the South side of Springfield during the late 60s and early 70s. She said that people were beating each other up based solely on their racial identities. She said that when she went to Upward Bound at Wittenberg, the students in the program were very diverse. And the adults made sure to enforce the message that all
274 of the racial tension that was going on in the city was not to be brought into the Upward
Bound environment. Janet said that this gave her the opportunity to get to know people who were not like her and it was rewarding. She then talked about how she and husband later bought a home in the Springfield suburb of Northridge because they had a good school system, which was important to them as they were raising two sons. She said that they went to a function at the school and she remarked to him that everyone was White.
She had not given much thought to the racial make-up of the neighborhood when they were house hunting, only realizing the lack of diversity after they had moved in. She says that since then, they have seen more diverse populations move into their neighborhood and it has been refreshing. Janet credits Upward Bound for exposing her to people from different backgrounds, and for teaching her that the world is made up of all different people; and we must all get along with people, regardless of their racial or socioeconomic backgrounds.
3/4/2019
This weekend has been probably one of the most frustrating weekends I’ve had in a long time...all because of transcribing. It was taking too much time to transcribe on my own and since a classmate who finished last year had raved about Descript.com because it was a huge help to her, as well as cost-effective, I decided to buy in. It is $24 a month, which includes 4 hours of transcription, and then you pay by the minute. Well, the program started experiencing issues and the audio would stop playing. I would have to close out the project and force-quit the program for it to function again. After doing this so many times on Saturday morning, I sent an email to their tech support, and received in return, a statement that they were away until Monday. I was heated. But because I’d paid
275 my money, I kept trying to push through. By Sunday, I was fed up and emailed them again. I got a response saying they were having issues and would fix them. I got another email informing me that the changes had been made, but I was still having issues with the program.
I’d met with my Committee Chair on Thursday and she’d told me about a different program she uses called Temi. In my frustration, I started using Temi on Sunday and was able to get through one full interview. I’m feeling better now, and although Temi isn’t perfect, I may continue to use it instead. However, I was only 9 minutes of audio away from being done with the interview I had been working on in Descript, so I may try to finish it at some point this week.
I made the mistake of scheduling two interviews (number 8 and number 9) this evening, know that I need to do laundry and pack so I can get on the road right after work tomorrow to head to Detroit for Uncle Junebug’s funeral. I’m exhausted and I SO want to be with my family right now, but these interviews really need to get done. I just about have my timeline for finishing the dissertation process in time for December graduation, so I need to keep pushing forward. I have two more scheduled for next week, which will bring me up to 11 total. I am trying to get a couple more, but these last few people are being horrible about returning emails, phone calls & text messages...and scheduling. I feel like a total stalker, chasing these people. There are three that I just cannot pin down at this time. If I could get those, it would bring me to a grand total of 14 and I would consider that a complete and total success!
The interview that I transcribed last night was one by a woman whom I will call
Angela Roe. She was involved in Upward Bound at Wittenberg University during the late
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70s. In my mind, her story illuminates how the Department of Education would not consider her a success story—that Wittenberg Upward Bound did not meet its objective with her. She did not complete a Bachelor’s degree within six years of graduating from high school. She left college due to the inability to pay (this was almost my fate), and changed course which took her from being a History major who intended to enter law school, to enrolling nursing school after having married. She has since becoming a Nurse
Practitioner….and that sounds pretty successful to me! Angela is a prime example of how the seeds we plant as Upward Bound personnel may not mature and bear fruit for years after a student leaves us....years after that six-year window after high school graduation closes. Her story is one of great resiliency. Many of the research studies I have read about first-generation students highlight first-generation students’ high levels of resiliency. Angela Roe’s story depicts that perfectly. We have data that documents the effectiveness of TRIO Programs in terms of how many students earn baccalaureate degrees by the 6th year after their high school graduation. But where is the longitudinal study in the vein of Attewell and Lavin (2007) that tracks the college graduation rates of
TRIO Upward Bound students 25 years after high school graduation? NO...I’m not doing it. I’m finishing this dissertation...then I’m graduating...and then I’m taking a nap.
3/13/2019
After a short hiatus to travel to Detroit to pay my respects to my late uncle, I am back on the grind with my research. I have been greatly empowered by my family members—I let them all know that my graduation date is Saturday, December 14, 2019. I was amazed at the number of them who said they plan to travel to Dayton for the graduation ceremony. I am a bit of a loner and I somewhat keep to myself as far as my
277 family is concerned. Therefore, I often forget that they, too, are supportive of my doctoral journey. Many of them don’t really understand what I’m doing. They just know it is a really big deal. And that’s enough for me. I just appreciate their love and support.
As I was driving home from Detroit, I reflected, as I often do, on how I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams. The descendant of both slaves and slave owners, with splashes of Creole and Native American, fed off the hardworking hands of blue collar workers, I am now embarking upon a doctoral journey...something that my ancestors might have never even imagined possible for someone who was their blood relative.
My grandmother, Rebecca Thompson Ramsey, who was born in 1912, once told me the story of how she was supposed to go to college. Her older sister had the opportunity to go away to college. Upon her graduation, she was supposed to get a job and then send money back home for my grandmother to go as well. My grandmother said the money never came. She said she was a smart girl, but she never got to go to college.
That’s why she supported me however she could. I knew she was living on a fixed income, but she would often reach into her brassiere (because that’s where old Southern women kept their money) and pull out a hundred dollars to help me pay for books or other college expenses. That was a lot of money for an elderly woman living on a fixed income to give up in the mid-1990s. But she always helped out when she could. I’m older and wiser now—in retrospect...I GET IT NOW! I now understand what my completing college meant to her. I was blessed to have her witness my undergraduate graduation from Central State University.
My mother attended Southern University in Baton Rouge, LA for only two years, and did not complete a Bachelor’s degree. I often wonder what my life would had been
278 like had my mother or grandmother had completed their degrees. Would my life have mirrored the lives my study participants have described providing their kids—the carefully calculated decisions about schools and educational opportunities they have crafted to ensure their children had the absolute best they were capable of giving; opportunities better than what they had; similarly to what we’ve done for our own daughter?
My mother, although not a degree holder, was very calculating in the schools she chose for me to attend. I went to a small private school in Detroit for preschool and kindergarten called Children’s Village. I remember my mother raving about the school because the kids there were reading at 2 and 3 years old. I was no different from those kids. It all felt like play time and fun to me, but we were actually reading as toddlers. I remember my mother later telling me that the State of Michigan came in and determined that pushing kids to read that young was stressful on the kids and forced them to dial back their education process. The Critical Theorist in me often wonders if a school in inner-city Detroit that was training young scholars to read before the age of 5 was intimidating to White lawmakers. I don’t remember being stressed. I remember loving school and having fun, and “Cat runs fast. Nan runs fast.”
My mother was laid off in the big Chrysler layoff of 1979 (she worked as a keypunch operator) and couldn’t wait to be called back, so we moved 85.5 miles away from everyone we knew in the entire world to Lansing, Michigan. She took a job working for the State of Michigan, doing audits on low-income housing developments. In
Lansing, she selected Holy Cross School for me to attend. I hated Holy Cross—and that is the honest truth. I felt alienated because I was from an urban area and spoke differently
279 than the other kids (remember, my family is Southern, so mix that in with the inner city culture), I was Black, and I was non-Catholic (raised Southern Baptist). We moved across town in 4th grade and I talked my mom into letting me go to the neighborhood school.
She agreed, but realized that the public school education there was substandard in comparison to what I had been receiving at Holy Cross. I was less focused, and I had actually earned the equivalent of my first D ever. Back to Holy Cross I went for 5th grade. I finished out 8th grade there and then begged her to allow me to attend Everett
High School, my neighborhood public high school. The only saving grace was that
Lansing Catholic Central High School did not have a marching band at the time and I was exceling with my new-found skill of drumming.
When I started Everett, my mother met with my guidance counselor and put him on notice: “I want Ieesha to have all the hardest classes with all the hardest teachers.” I was mortified. I just knew she was setting me up for failure. What I didn’t realize at the time was that she was advocating for my education...much like the parents in my study.
She knew my abilities, saw college as a goal for me, and did not want to see me slip through the cracks. I ended up in mostly enriched, honors, and AP classes in high school, right along with my class’s highest achievers. I was inducted into National Honor Society my Junior year, one of only two African American students. And for as much as I hated
Holy Cross, I now realize that it set a firm academic foundation for me to excel later throughout the various levels of my schooling.
I see similarities between what my non-degreed mother did for me, in comparison to what the degreed, Upward Bound alumni in my study have done for their children. I will admit that my mother did not act alone. My Aunt Gladys (Mama Gladys) was her
280 partner in crime in terms of raising me and advocating for my education. Mama Gladys worked in the guidance office at Highland Park Community College in Highland Park,
Michigan when I was growing up, so she was my connection to all things college. Mama
Gladys had earned an Associate’s degree, which was a big deal for a Black woman who had been born in 1939. She was probably an even bigger advocate for me attending college than my mother was. I got the majority of my college information from her.
Even though I had a mother who advocated for my education; and afforded me some social capital through her later white collar work connections; and created a college-going culture in our home as best as she knew how—I still can’t help, but think what my life would have been like had my mother had been a Bachelor’s degree holder.
This weekend, I had the chance to connect with my second cousin I helped raise. I call her my “First Born” child because she was living with me and my then-husband when we conceived my daughter. She didn’t have the parental support necessary for high academic achievement growing up, but was able to experience college-going culture when she moved in with us, as we are both multiple degree holders. She started college, but had to leave after one semester because of financial difficulty. She has since started a career in nursing and, despite having not finished a nursing degree, has been very fortunate to carve out an amazing career in nursing administration. She is looking into starting a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) degree in the Fall of this year because she wants to earn a degree.
I shared with her something that I did not hear growing up as a first-generation student. I talked to her about career moves and career advancement. I used our uncle and other family members as examples. My uncle retired from the Chrysler assembly line
281 making $30 an hour with just a high school diploma. He did very well for himself, but he simply had a job—not a career. And so I shared with First Born that she needed to be career-savvy as well...and that earning that BSN would be a huge asset to her career. She shared that she could make well over $100,000 in nursing administration after earning that degree. She’s been doing her research, and I’m proud of her. I feel like I lit the fire in her to achieve in terms of college attainment, but she has taken everything I have given her and run with it. I’m so very proud of her and can’t wait to see what she achieves.
She’s kind of like my continuing-generation child.
3/15/2019
I did interviews number eleven and twelve last night. One participant, whom I have not yet given a fictitious name (I have several that still need names...I need to get on that) talked about being raised by a single father after the passing of her mother. My heart about exploded when she said her father used to tell her to get her education because it is the one thing no one can ever take from you. My mother used to say the exact same thing! After hearing her talk about her father, I decided he was a man I wish I could have met.
She said they were farmers who grew up on the edge of town and she went to predominantly White schools until they later moved into the city and moved to the Black side of town. One theme that I believe is going to be very salient throughout my study is that of the differences in learning environment for Black students who go to predominantly White schools versus Black. It seems that the study participants are continually expressing that they felt more accepted and less alienated when they went to schools where they were in the majority. I’ve seen several instances where the parents
282 advocated for their children to attend predominantly Black K-12 schools or Historically
Black Colleges and Universities after they had had their own lackluster experiences in predominantly White schools. This ties into how the now-educated parents carefully calculated their children’s educational experiences, whereas, they may have just gone to their neighborhood schools. For some of these parents, race is a factor in that “best educational opportunities for my child” equation.
3/18/19
I just finished transcribing a woman’s interview whom I will call Janet Robinson.
She may very well be the lone ‘non-Black’ person in my participant pool. Her comments about the tumultuous racial environment of Springfield during her time in high school were enlightening, as I did not realize Springfield had been so racially charged back then.
She talked about Upward Bound at Wittenberg being a safe-haven—that the leaders were clear that racial discrimination and clashes had no place in the Program. And so Janet was afforded an opportunity to get to know people who were different from her. She expresses how those experiences carried over into her adult life.
After her interview was officially over, we got off into conversations about other things and I debated if I should bother to transcribe that conversation or not. I’m glad I did, as something interesting kind of jumped out at me. She talked about how one of her sons had the opportunity to go to Spain and France in high school. She had mentioned earlier on in the interview that her husband had not gone to college. She said that when she discussed their son going on the trip, her husband stated that it was too much money to spend on a trip. She advocated for him taking the trip because she felt like he would learn far more on that trip than he’d ever learn in school. And she was right. She shared
283 about how he learned that people lived differently than we do in Europe, and about his experiences interacting with people, and the foods he got to try. She described his trip as a life-changing experience.
I can make the connection between her experiences, interacting with others who were different from her in Upward Bound (she even discussed how there were differences, even amongst the White students in the program), and her understanding of the need to continually expose oneself to new experiences—different places, people, ideas, etc. This kind of goes back to how White people have the privilege of deciding if and whether they interact with people who are different than themselves, while people of color must learn to interact effectively with Whites to successfully navigate society.
Between her noticing of the lack of diversity in her new Northridge neighborhood, when they moved in and her advocating for her sons to experience diverse environments, Janet gained a different perspective on life through her involvement in Upward Bound. I notice the same thing happening for my White students who end up being immersed in my predominantly Black Upward Bound Program. In the words of one of my parents this weekend at our Spring Break College Tour Parent Meeting—we end up producing White kids who are “Woke”—who have a heightened sense of awareness of diversity and social justice. I guess those are unintended learning outcomes for urban Upward Bound
Programs.
The other thought that surfaced while I was transcribing the convo after Janet’s interview was my own carefully calculated educational opportunities for my own daughter. Much like the parents I’ve spoken with the last few weeks, I too, have carefully calculated the educational experiences I have exposed my daughter to. I have taken my
284 daughter oversees, like Janet sent her son. And just like Darryl Thompson (whom I’ll talk more about later) and Xavier Evans, I have been intentional about the camps that my daughter has attended. I realized that I am no different than the folks I have interviewed—a first-generation college student who realized through my own learning experiences that I wanted more for my child, and intentionally exposed her to learning experiences that will help her in determining her own college and career goals.
3/20/19
Since taking Dr. Michele Welkener’s class where we explored culture—what culture is and what elements constitute a culture—I find myself constantly analyzing cultures. I find myself exploring new cultures into which I’ve been thrusted (willingly or unwillingly) and cultures of which I feel a sense of belonging or owning. I realized that I am intimately familiar with, and whether I want to accept it or not, a part of college-going culture. I am an ambassador of college-going culture to my Upward Bound students. I am so familiar with college-going culture that I often don’t realize that some of the themes, concepts, and ideas that are second-place to me are foreign to the students and parents I serve.
My daughter’s involvement in sports that are often non-traditional for African-
Americans helps me put the foreignness of college-going culture to my students and parents into perspective. I remember when she first started club-level swimming. A large part of this culture involved what I call the “tent city.” Because the natatoriums in the facilities were too small to seat everyone who was there to compete and spectate, players not competing and parents bring in stadium chairs and blankets and set up in the gymnasium. When it’s time for the swimmer to compete, the swimmer and their parents
285 head to the natatorium for the event. Swim meets generally start extremely early in the morning and last until the early afternoon. My daughter swam on both Saturday and
Sunday mornings, so many of my essays for doctoral coursework were written on a gym floor.
This year, my daughter is a freshman in high school. She swam for her high school swim team and the culture was much different. The swim meets only last 2 or 3 hours and there are no tent cities. There are fewer teams competing at one meet and everyone just crowds into the natatorium and stays there.
This year, my daughter also started playing lacrosse. It was her first time ever playing the sport and she made the team. Once again, I was thrusted into a culture that was foreign to me. I had never been to a lacrosse game. And once again, as with when she started swimming, I felt a sense of anxiety about being thrusted into that culture. I’d imagine that my Upward Bound parents feel the same way….”how do I find the building
I need to drop my child off at amongst all those other buildings on that big, huge campus?
Is it ok to park here, or do I need to park someplace else? I don’t want to get a ticket.”
During her first game, I was sitting in front of the girls who played for her school’s varsity team. As our team’s girls would near the goal area, the varsity girls would yell, “Dance on her! Dance on her!” It was a term that I’d never heard before, but I interpreted it as ‘get around their defense to score.’ My daughter also talked about ‘her crease.’ I had to google that one. My daughter plays goalie and so the crease is the area that is her ‘goalie box.’ It’s that area that is off limits to the other players. She then told me about how she, as the goalie, calls the plays and tells her teammates what to do after
286 she stops a goal attempt by the other team. I’m a basketball girl, so this is ALL new to me.
I am imagining that college-going culture is similarly as foreign to my Upward
Bound students and their families. As an Upward Bound Director and an ambassador to college-going culture, it is my job to not only make it less foreign to them. I have to also teach them to navigate it successfully. And just as I know that being immersed in a new, foreign culture causes me some anxiety, I have to be in tune to the way they may be feeling about it, and if maybe they might have some anxiety around their college-going culture immersion.
3/25/2019
When I did my research project for the Qualitative Research course, I interviewed three African-American first-generation students who were students at an elite, private, predominantly White institution of higher education about their experiences on campus.
One of the unexpected findings was the influence of mentors, who were not first- generation, in lives of a first-generation student, and how that influence caused the student to not feel ‘first-generation’ or experience what is documented in the literature about the predominant first-generation experience.
In her interview, Deborah “Dee Dee” Dennison talks about her aunts and uncles who were educators. She said they played a role in mentoring her, much like the study participant’s Godparents had mentored her in my previous study. Dee Dee’s aunts and uncles contributed greatly to creating a college-going culture for her and she credits them for bridging the gap to college for her. She also credit’s Upward Bound. But I think that mentorship relationships are necessary for first-generation students, especially if they are
287 not participants in an Upward Bound Program. My Aunt Gladys, aka Mama Gladys, played that role in my life. She worked in the counseling center at Highland Park
Community College in Highland Park, MI. She was where my college-going information came from. My mother insisted that I was going to college after high school. But Mama
Gladys supplied me with college information, scholarship information, told me to apply to more than one school, and took me an hour and 15 minutes to St. Johns to take my
ACT a second time when all the testing centers in Lansing were booked out. My mother did an excellent job of surrounding me with college-educated people. But Mama Gladys was my college-going culture ambassador. She had earned an Associate’s degree herself...which was a HUGE deal for an African-American woman born in the 1939 U.S.
South, and who had already married and mothered two children. I did not realize the significance of that, or her role as my college-going culture ambassador until many years after she had passed away. I’m SO grateful for the role she played in getting me to college.
4/2/2019
Interestingly enough, most, if not all of the study participants describe themselves as good, if not average students. Most of them described themselves as intrinsically motivated in high school to get good grades. A few of them describe simply getting C’s because they only had to put in half the work effort, and a C was acceptable in their household.
What I have been impressed by is the number of participants who describe themselves as avid readers. Many of them then talk about how they had a love of reading and their parents encouraged that by providing them with reading material. One even
288 went back to college to become a librarian because of her love for reading. Many pushed their own children to read. One mother described how her oldest daughter picked up her love of reading, but struggled to get her younger daughter to read because she hated it.
She said that she would provide her daughter with magazines, rather than novels so she could read in quicker spurts and that was her way of getting her to read.
Of course, I have not analyzed data yet, but I am very curious to see if parents encouraging their kids to read contributed to creating a college-going culture in their homes. I remember seeing my mother read novels all the time, and also reading them myself when I was growing up. I was NOT a fan of non-fiction. I loved a good book that would whisk me away to someplace else and engross me in a story. One of the things I hope to get back to when I am done with this PhD is pleasure reading. I could take whole vacations in my mind just by reading a book. Reading novels seemed to stimulate my imagination. The characters in books would become so real to me that I could actually hear their voices as I read their dialogue. But just as I read and my mind was opened to new places, events, and ideas, the same was happening for these study participants, and then their children. It will be interesting if this ends up being a study finding. I would definitely say it would be an emergent code.
4/24/2019
Congratulations to me! I trudged through the drudgery of transcription and transcribed my absolute last interview last night! Yay! I had a participant whom I’d been trying to interview email me and agree to participate nearly 2 months after initial contact.
I had already transcribed the first 13 and was nearing the end of reviewing them and sending them back to the participants to review for Member Checking. But I kept hearing
289 my Chair, Dr. Mary Ziskin’s voice in my head: “Don’t turn anyone away.” So I agreed to do the interview, and I’m glad that I did. It was excellent material! The gentleman, whom
I will call Lewis Daniels...the passion in his voice about the impact that Upward Bound has had on his entire life, not just his adolescence. And the impact it had on the lives of his children...I wish I could share his story with every last one of my students to get them to completely appreciate their Upward Bound experiences and take from it everything they possibly can. He said that when he talks about Upward Bound, he gets emotional because of everything the Baldwin Wallace Upward Bound Program poured into him.
And he said that he approached his children’s college transition process exactly the same way it was taught to him through Upward Bound. Amazing!
Today, I move onto the coding and analysis phase. I think this is the part I’ve been waiting for throughout my entire doctoral experience. I purchased a 24-month license to N*vivo last night and will download it to my computer today. It’s been forever since I used it, so there may be a little learning curve involved. I can’t wait to crunch this data and see what themes emerge.
One emergent theme I see that I wasn’t expecting is the prevalence of avid reading/a love of reading amongst the alumni; and then the encouragement of avid reading amongst their children. Bethany Martin talked about how she had always been an avid reader and one of her daughters was, but one was not. She realized that her daughter would not get into books, but was more likely to read shorter magazine articles.
Therefore, she would place magazines around the house, which encouraged her daughter to read.
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On the surface, the data seem to suggest that kids who read regularly have a higher propensity toward academic success. The alumni who expressed being avid readers also expressed being strong students academically. I don’t believe that my little old research study alone can prove that, but I am sure this is something I will be exploring at some point during my data analysis.
4/25/2019
Last night I downloaded Nvivo, qualitative research analysis software. I had used it for my Qualitative Analysis course research project and liked it. But that was several years ago. Last night, I realized that it is going to be a bit of a learning curve to get back to the place where I feel like I know what I’m doing with it. I found a good youtube instructional video last night and played around with some of the data. You can youtube how to do just about ANYTHING! While it’s frustrating that I have to crawl before I can walk with this software, I’m still waiting for a couple of the study participants, who have indicated that they would make changes to their interview transcripts, to get those back to me. Those who I don’t hear from within a week or two time, I will just move forward with what I have. I have had one return his with many changes. I’ve had two indicate that they will get it back to me as soon as they can. In the meantime, I will upload what I have from those I have not heard from into Nvivo, along with the ones who have submitted updated transcripts.
4/28/2019
One theme that was salient among all of the participants’ interviews was race. All of the participants except for one identifies as African American. Race/being Black seems to have influenced the educational experiences of all of the participants in some
291 way, shape, or form. For some of the participants, attending schools where they were in the majority meant feeling supported, motivated, and encouraged. For some who attended predominantly White K-12 schools, their experiences moved them to want to attend
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). And for some who had attended
Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) of higher education, their experiences pushed them to encourage their children to attend HBCUs so that their children would not experience the sense of alienation and invisibility that they themselves had experienced at a PWI.
Jonathan Kozol’s Shame of a Nation details the resegregation of America’s schools through systemic racism and Whites not wanting their children to attend schools where Blacks are in the majority. However, I am wondering if there is a phenomenon amongst educated, affluent Blacks where they are choosing educational experiences for their children where their children are in the majority and being educated by professionals who look like them. The other thing that I see these first-generation professionals doing that is different from their parents is researching school ratings to find the best educational opportunity for their children, whereas many of them went to their neighborhood schools, or were a part of desegregation efforts where they were bussed to predominantly White schools (which were perceived to be better educational experiences than their neighborhood schools).
4/29/2019
The coding party officially began last night. I’m still re-learning Nvivo, but I at least know enough now to be functional. I went back into my proposal to refamiliarize myself with what I had spelled out in terms of coding in my proposal. But then, I realized
292 something. As I was transcribing interviews, I was writing about the points that stood out in my mind in the reflexive journal. Dr. Ziskin has suggested I code the journal, and I’d agreed that that was a great idea—I would code the journal after I coded all of the interviews. However, this weekend, I decided to code the journal first—to allow it to be a kind of roadmap toward relevant codes, as opposed to wading through the sea of codes that would surface by first coding each individual interview.
5/5/2019
I am making big moves today in terms of coding. There are so many thoughts and ideas circulating in my mind as I code each interview. I can almost hear my mind dictating Chapter 4 right now. It’s exciting and scary all at the same time. If I continue at this pace, I may very well meet my goal of beginning to draft Chapter 4 by the beginning of June.
I’m not sure if I mentioned this before, but something I see emerging in data is the propensity for study participants, once they move up on the socioeconomic ladder, to use their newfound affluence to move into better, more affluent neighborhoods so that their children can attend higher performing neighborhood schools. It seems that most will either foot the bill for private school if their neighborhood schools are not good, or they will move into better neighborhoods with higher performing schools. Regardless of which direction they decide to go, they seem to be intentional about finding the best schooling and educational opportunities for their children, while they don’t always describe their parents as being intentional about crafting their own experiences.
Of interest also is the question of whose responsibility is it to pay for the child’s college education. Some parents assume the responsibility by first helping their child find
293 scholarship monies, but then covering any balance left afterward. Others have told their children that the ball is in their court in terms of paying for college. I’m not sure how I feel about that personally and I’ve gone back and forth in my head about it. I believe that my daughter’s vehicle to secure herself in the middle class or better is a college education. I believe that she will receive scholarship money because she is a high academic achiever. But at what point do I feel I should kick in my money if her scholarship money doesn’t cover everything? And how much of my money? One participant paid for his daughter to attend an Ivy League when she did not receive much in the way of scholarship funds. One other participant told her sons she was not contributing and if they wanted to make it happen, they either needed to get scholarship funds, take out loans, or consider military service to cover the cost. I’m still not sure how
I feel about all of this, but I am also not trying to go into debt and jeopardize my financial stability to foot the bill for my child’s college education.
5/7/19
As I’m coding, I am starting to notice that many of my participants started their children in private or Montessori schools for elementary and middle school, but allowed their children to change to public high schools later on in their schooling. Interestingly enough, this was similar to what my mother did with me when I was growing up. I started out at Children’s Village in Detroit which took me through pre-school and Kindergarten.
Then, we moved to Lansing and I started Holy Cross. I went there through 8th grade, with the exception of 4th grade where my mother allowed me to attend the neighborhood school, which was an academic success disaster. Back to Holy Cross I went until 8th
294 grade. I may have mentioned before that I absolutely hated Holy Cross. However, it did give me the academic foundation that I needed to subsequently be successful.
I begged and pleaded my mother, kind of like a couple of the other participants’ kids, to allow me to go to public high school. I then attended Lansing Everett High
School, which was my neighborhood school and the school of choice for performing arts
(I was a drummer and a singer, so that worked out perfectly). I wanted to do marching band and Lansing Catholic Central didn’t not have a marching band at the time, only a
Concert Band. Of course my mom threatened me: If you don’t get good grades, I’m sending you to Catholic Central...because somewhere we’ve decided that the Catholic school education is far superior to all others (My daughter now attends a Catholic high school). When I pulled that 4.0 first marking period at Everett, my mother was convinced that she had made the right decision...after, of course telling my uninterested guidance counselor to put me in all of the hardest classes with all of the hardest teachers. I begged for a general curriculum, not realizing what the College-Prep Curriculum would mean for a student like me. My mother demanded I be put in college-prep. I’m so glad she did!
5/11/2019
One interesting aspect that I don’t think I’ve mentioned as of yet is the experience of busing and school integration. Some of the participants expressed having been a part of the school integration movement as African Americans either being bused into predominantly White schools, or having been ‘invited’ to attend predominantly White schools. Khalil Davis talks about not being bused, but simply invited to attend the predominantly White high school on the other side of town. Sonia Dixon talks of actually being bused across town to attend a Predominantly White high school, but because of the
295 high poverty rate in that high school, the Upward Bound Program at Baldwin Wallace actually targeted that school, thus resulting in her introduction to the Program.
There are some opponents of integration that believe that African American students earned greater academic gains in all-Black schools, despite the disparity in school resources between White schools and Black schools. There are proponents of integration that believe that access to better educational opportunities for Blacks gave us equal access to better educational gains. I can see both sides of the argument...especially when you consider the conversations the Davis’s had with one another as they compared their high school experiences and how they both unpack their collegiate experiences at predominantly White Northwestern. They express being lauded by others for attending
Northwestern, but not feeling they got the full value of a collegiate experience on that campus—thus, inspiring them to send their own high-achieving children to HBCUs.
Black students often experience feeling marginalized and invisible in predominantly
White schools...even the high achieving ones. At the end of the day, do the benefits of attending predominantly White schools outweigh the costs—alienation, invisibility, marginalization, lower expectations, implicit and explicit bias, etc.
5/21/2019
So the first significant thing that happened recently is that I wrote the first narrative. I think it turned out nicely, but I need to come up with a nice ending. It was exhausting to tell someone else’s story, yet rewarding all at the same time. And now I have to write 13 more!
This past weekend I took four Upward Bound students to the Educational
Opportunity Association (EOA) National Women in STEM conference on the campus of
296 the University of Illinois-Chicago. Unexpectedly, I ran into a colleague whom I was planning to approach to ask if he would be an external auditor for my dissertation research. His name is Dr. Wilfred “Mickey” Johnson from the University of Northern
Iowa Upward Bound Program. He has done his own research on TRIO and has also served on other doctoral committees and is a seasoned TRIO professional. I asked if he would be willing and he said yes! I plan to approach one more TRIO professional, turned researcher.
And finally, the last thing that happened, just today, was that the EOA sent out their official call for proposals for the 2019 regional conference in Omaha, NE. I had always talked about presenting my research at this conference...I just didn’t realize that it would all come so quickly. Is it too soon to submit a proposal? I’m still in the analysis phase! I feel like I should be panicking right now.
6/10/2019
It’s official! The University of Dayton Upward Bound Program Summer
Academy 2019 has officially begun. This is always an exciting, nervous, and exhausting time for me. It’s the time that all Upward Bound personnel live for, as it is our flagship experience. This year my program is fully residential—my students will reside on campus for 6 weeks in the residence halls while taking courses in Math, Language Arts,
Science, and Spanish. We will take field trips and tour college campuses each week.
While all of this is exciting, it is very stressful for me. My work days become 10-
14 hour days during the duration of the Summer Academy. To add to that, my Program
Specialist, who is my only other full-time, administrative employee, is on maternity leave throughout the duration of the Summer Academy. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, my
297 part-time Program Assistant, who is the third member of my professional level staff, took a full-time job with another Upward Bound Program. Therefore, throughout the duration of my busiest Upward Bound season, I will be the only administrative staff member. I will be running this by myself! The saving grace is a summer staff that is dedicated and on top of everything. They are making my job easier and providing the support that I need to pull this thing off.
One thing that I plan to do this summer is an Etiquette Dinner. This idea was the result of some of the study participants talking about that having been something they did with their Upward Bound Program. I guess one could say that my research is already informing my practice! Plus, I have seen first-hand the way some of my students eat. I feel the need to prepare them for when I take them to student conferences...and for the rest of their lives. It will be an opportunity for the students to have a formal dinner in the
University Ballroom where they dress up. I had thought about making it a dinner/dance, but popular music is always a source of contention because of inappropriate song lyrics. I generally try to avoid dance parties for students anymore, unless they are a part of a student conference where I have taken them to attend and I don’t have control over the programming.
All while running my Summer Academy somewhat single handedly, I still need to continue to move forward with finishing this dissertation. I’m progressing well through the narratives at this time, but will need more time to write. I plan to take a couple weeks off in August that I can dedicate solely to writing after my Summer Academy ends.
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7/16/2016
My Chapter 4 aka my Narratives are done and have been submitted to my chair!
I’m super excited, as while I enjoyed writing them, they were really long and seemingly took forever. I only did 13 narratives for the 14 interviews, as I decided to combine
Khalil and Nicole Davis’s interviews into one narrative since they are married. This was probably the funnest chapter to write, as I imagine Chapter 5 (Findings) and Chapter 6
(Implications/Discussion) will be much more tedious and painful to write. Because I have been analyzing the entire time that I have been journaling, transcribing, coding, and narrating, things should come together quickly...now if I can just get through this
Summer Academy!
I have zero energy left after these 10-14 hour work days to give to the writing process, so most of my writing now takes place on the weekends. Because I work best during big, uninterrupted blocks of time, Saturdays and Sundays are good times for me to work, provided I am free those days and have no other obligations those days. My daughter’s athletic commitments in the evenings cause me to have to wait around after work some days until she’s done. Those are the days when I set up shop at Biggby Coffee near campus and force myself to write. Those have been very productive times.
This is the last week of the high school-aged portion of my Summer Academy.
Prayerfully, I’ll make it through. My Bridge students still have two more weeks left in their program.
7/30/2019
Two amazing things happened this week. The first is that I submitted my draft of
Chapter 5 to my Chair. In that draft, I decided to detail the following salient themes:
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Parental Involvement—the study participants described high levels of parental involvement in their children’s education process, while some of them described their parents not being at all involved in theirs. I decided to liken that to Bronfenbrenner’s
Ecological Systems which basically says that when a child’s microsystems interact with one another (in this instance their home environment, e.g. parents and their school environment e.g. teacher), the child is better supported and enjoys a higher level of academic success.
Another finding was school selection. The study participants expressed being very intentional about the decisions they made in selecting their children’s schools. Many of them used their newly attained higher socioeconomic status to move into more affluent neighborhoods so that their children could attend suburban public schools. Others used that affluence to afford private schools. Some had their children test into free, public magnet schools. Parents have access to school performance data, so they make informed decisions about the schools their children will attend. This places pressure on public schools to improve their performance so that they can compete with other schooling options.
A third important finding was the study participants being intentional about exposing their children to learning and cultural opportunities. Vygotsky’s Socio-Cultural
Theory speaks to this, as college-educated parents are now in a better position to serve as a strong More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) to their children who can then help their cultural development on the social level, which then happens again on the individual level. This finding is also in line with Bourdieu’s Cultural Capital Theory. Upward
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Bound built the cultural capital of the study participants and then they were able to pass that capital down to their children.
The last salient finding is reading. Many of the study participants expressed being avid readers in their childhood who also encouraged their children to read. Research tells us that reading books with children improves a child’s psychosocial functioning, as well as their language, literacy, and cognitive development. It also tells us that children imitate the behaviors of their parents. Therefore, if they see a parent reading, they are more likely to read themselves. Parents must be role models for their children when it comes to reading.
The second amazing thing that happened this week is that my proposal to present my research at the Educational Opportunity Association (EOA) Professional
Development Conference in Omaha in November was accepted! I’ll have the opportunity to present my research to TRIO professionals in my regional association. I am completely excited and terrified...all at the same time. This will be my first time presenting at this conference. This conference represents a talented group of professionals who are all doing the work of TRIO and more specifically, Upward Bound. This is the presentation of the culmination of the last 5.5 years of my life...no pressure. None at all.
8/4/2019
I submitted my Chapter 6 to my Chair today. I cannot believe that all 6 chapters have now been written and submitted. And now, my least favorite part—the editing process—begins. I am taking two weeks off in the next few weeks. The first week I will just be at home, editing. The second week, I will be in Punta Cana editing on the beach. I
301 like to work outdoors. Why not do it on the beach with drink service where the pina coladas are plentiful?
While I know I hate the editing and revision process—as mentioned before, I’m really a once-and-done kinda girl. However, that’s not how dissertation life works. I will say that during the proposal process, my Chair was extremely thorough and my committee found no major issues with my proposal or proposal defense. I’m shooting for that experience this time around as well.
8/13/2019
Revisions have been done on Chapter 4 and on Chapter 3. The week off so far has been highly productive. Unfortunately, I had another uncle pass away last week—this time my uncle, Gene Ramsey. I’m traveling to Detroit tomorrow and Thursday for the funeral. While I will lose valuable work time, it will be good to see my family whom I don’t get to see often. I have to focus on that positive because I absolutely loathe funerals.
I am impatiently waiting for Dr. Ziskin’s feedback on Chapter 5 so I can start that editing process. I think editing and revising Chapter 4 was gravy. That chapter was all the narratives. Chapter 5 required far more depth and while I feel like I have made a valiant effort, I’m not sure I completely hit the nail on the head. We’ll see what happens when that email comes through from Dr. Ziskin. I’m nervous.
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