Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 1998 Giants among us : a study of first-generation college graduates Sandria D. Rodriguez Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Education Commons Recommended Citation Rodriguez, Sandria D., "Giants among us : a study of first-generation college graduates" (1998). Dissertations. 3015. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/3015 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1998 Sandria D. Rodriguez LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO GIANTS AMONG US: A STUDY OF FIRST-GENERATION COLLEGE GRADUATES A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND POLICY STUDIES BY SANDRIA D. RODRIGUEZ CHICAGO, ILLINOIS JANUARY 1998 Copyright by Sandria D. Rodriguez, 1998 All Rights Reserved ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The number of people who gave me invaluable help with this study is staggering. Friends, colleagues, family, acquaintances, strangers -- their contributions made the development and completion of my work possible. I thank them all. Included in this number is my dissertation director, Dr. Jennifer Haworth, who has been a dream realized. In the conceptualization phase of this project, she devoted hours to guiding my brainstorming and initial research, and her commitment to me and to my work have been unflagging throughout. Her insightful questions, continued availability, scholarly expertise, genuine interest in this study, encouragement, guidance, and critiques were absolutely necessary to my completion ofthis project. I am deeply grateful to her. I also thank the members of my dissertation committee. The unequivocal knowledge that Dr. Terry Williams, my advisor, has been available to me and vitally interested in my success has been continually affirming. Dr. Randolph Webster's critiques and encouragement have been crucial to my success. I thank my friends and colleagues who were incredibly helpful to me at every stage of the process. Norm Sage, reference librarian, was indispensable. So many of my colleagues made their stories available to me, applauded my work, offered to proofread, and provided constructive criticism of whatever text or idea that I shared. Others motivated me by setting realistic deadlines -- with accompanying penalties -- for me to finish my work. Virtual and 1ll actual strangers were helpful in talking about my dissertation, offering their stories, and recommending potential participants for the study. My debt and gratitude to the participants in this study cannot be stated. They are all outstanding individuals who took me, for a time, into their lives and into their hearts. They are all shining examples of resilience, generosity, and positive intention. Without them this study would not exist. Without them, writing my dissertation would not have been half so inspiring or enjoyable. As for my family -- my parents, my husband and daughter, my brother and sisters, my nieces and nephews -- their love, strength, and encouragement never faltered. They never grew tired, and I am grateful. lV DEDICATION To my Mother and Father Rosetta Williams and Burnett Williams CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . m Chapter I. INTRODUCTION . 1 Background to the Study . 4 Purposes of the Study and Research Questions . 7 Definitions of Terms ........................................ 8 Review of Related Literature ................................ 10 Transition to College . 11 Specific Barriers to College Success . 13 Potential Remedies to Barriers . 18 Limitations of the Literature . 19 Significance of the Study . 21 II. METHOD .............................................. 24 A Positioned Subject Approach to Inquiry . 24 Study Design and Method . 25 Selection of Research Subjects ............................... 28 Data Collection Procedures ................................. 30 Interviews ........................................ 30 Document Analysis .................................. 32 Data Analysis Procedures ................................... 32 Trustworthiness of the Study ................................ 36 Limitations of the Study . 3 8 INTRODUCTION TO PART TWO BY THEIR WORDS WE KNOW THEM: THE LIFE STORIES OF FIVE FIRST- GENERATION COLLEGE GRADUATES ........................... 40 III. MARY SWOPES -- OF SERVICE ........................... 43 IV. LOOK WHAT I BRING TO YOU GOOD PEOPLE .............. 73 V. PICASSO'S PRINCIPLE .................................. 97 VI. MAY I HELP YOU? ..................................... 123 VII. OONA FA KNO WHA OONA CUM FRUM (YOU SHOULD KNOW WHERE YOU CAME FROM) ................. 147 Vt INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE A SENSE OF SELF: A CONDITION FOR SELFLESSNESS 170 VIII. FAMILY, SCHOOL, COMMUNITY: VEIDCLES TO REALIZED POTENTIAL . 172 Special Status . 177 Positive Naming . 182 Parental Attitudes Toward Knowledge ........................ 188 Home, School, Community ................................. 195 Ascending Cross-Class Identification . 206 IX. ACCESS, SUCCESS, EGRESS: THE COLLEGIATE EXPERIENCE 217 Getting in the Door . 218 Cold Comfort Zone: Entering the Culture of College . 225 Purpose, Process, and Place: An Agenda for the Informal Curriculum. 233 The Professor as Change Agent . 246 X. ACTIVISM: A SAMPLER ................................ 258 Engaging Activism: Profiles of Six First-Generation College Graduates 259 Larry ............................................ 259 Jack ............................................ 264 Carmen .......................................... 267 Michael .......................................... 271 Theresa .......................................... 274 Hycel ........................................... 276 Why Activism?: The Compulsion to Love ...................... 282 Audacious Dreaming: The Benefits of Risk ..................... 287 XI. IN PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS ............................. 299 A Retrospective ......................................... 302 Prescriptions from Lives: Insights Gleaned from a Study of First-Generation College Graduates .................... 306 vu Implications of the Study for Promoting the Success of First-Generation College Graduates . 313 Recommendations for Further Research ......................... 319 APPENDIX A. ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS ........................... 322 B. PRELIMINARY INTERVIEW PROTOCOL ................... 325 REFERENCES . 328 VITA.............................................................. 335 vm CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Sometime after midnight on a star lit evening in the autumn of 1931, my mother and her siblings were awakened by loud knocks on the front door oftheir house, the snorting ofhorses, and the shouts ofwhite men demanding that my grandfather come out. Holding a lamp before her like Lady Liberty's flarMJ/ my grandmother opened the door and told the men, who were not hooded, that my grandfather was not there. ''My churren are sleeping, "she told them. 'Please don't wake them up. " Two of the men came in and looked around the three room house. They carried lanterns which shone upon my mother and her sisters in one bed and her brothers in the other. They looked under the beds, in the kitchen; there was no place to hide inside the house. And my grandfather, warned by a sympathetic white man an hour earlier of his impending lynching, had flown into the night, mysteriously lifted, as it seemed, above woods, swamp, and river never to contact his wife or children again. The weather turned cold early that year. There was deep snow. My grandmother had work cooking for teachers at the white people's school. She 1 2 would wrap burlap sacks - or inner tubes from car tires when she could get them -- around her feet as protection against the snowdrifts covering the fields and pathways to andfrom work. My mother missed almost the whole year ofschool because she had no shoes. She never got beyondfifth grade, and though she could read children's stories and the Bible, she was functionally illiterate. Yet, she had an unquenchable love and respect for education. As a mother she imparted that love of learning to her five children, all ofwhom went to college. My sisters, brother, and I are college educated members of the middle class basically because of my parents' great desire that we make a better living for ourselves than they had been able to do. They made tremendous personal sacrifices to ensure our future. I remember that my mother wore the same coat for ten winters when I was growing up. She would go north to the city during the four months after Christmas to work as a live-in maidfor rich white people in order to help my father pay college tuition. From the vantage point ofour own comfortable stations in life, my siblings and I see clearly that our mother's sacrifices on our behalf, along with those of our father, were nothing short ofphenomenal. Interestingly enough, within the context of her familial background, my mother's aspirations that her children become college educated was an exhibition ofdeviant behavior. Her own education had not been encouraged, and none ofher siblings had urged their children to aspire to earn a college 3 degree. In fact, some