Kari Plog '11

Maria Chávez leads with her own experience when she addresses academic opportunity and achievement. Specifically, she empathizes with students who come from marginalized populations.

Chávez, chair of politics and government and associate professor of political science, identifies as Latina. She’s a native Spanish speaker who didn’t learn English before beginning school. She was raised in an immigrant household in the Southwest and experienced many of the obstacles fellow Latinos face every day in the U.S.

Like many who come from a similar background, Chávez was the first in her family to graduate from college, despite the barriers she faced. She came from a home and a school system that didn’t encourage her to pursue higher education. She didn’t know the questions to ask regarding that pursuit.

“It informs the research I do,” she said.

“It’s important that, if we want a strong democracy, we must have inclusion from all voices,” Chávez said. Inclusion of all voices is paramount to educational success for all students, marginalized or otherwise, she added. “The more connected we are, the better able we are to improve society. Diversity in profession and education benefits everyone.”

Chávez said her speech at the conference focused on the findings of her most recent book project, which is due out in 2019. The book, titled Latino Professional Success in America: Public Policies, People, and Perseverance, explores how first-generation Latinos became professionals, their experiences as professionals amid the country’s institutional racism, and the policies and programs this group believes would help increase their presence in the professional world.

Chávez says Latinos are the largest ethnic group in the U.S., yet they significantly lack representation in professions across the board.

“Latinos are underrepresented in powerful segments of American society,” she said. “We must ask what the implications of this continued political and professional underrepresentation is on our society and our democratic institutions. Beyond issues of representation, this research is important for our civic health.”

She said that fact clearly illustrates the need to address the achievement gap through better public policies and educational support systems at every stage in the pipeline.

“It’s inequitable practices in education that lead to a lack of achievement for groups of people,” she said. “If we can’t fulfill our potential because we just don’t have a way to do it, then we aren’t getting to the realization of human dignity.”

Chávez said she sought out and received support throughout her own educational journey, despite external challenges: a cultural background in which she says women’s ambitions were often suppressed and a racially segregated community in which Latinos were often oppressed. She started in community college, transferred to California State University, Chico, and eventually earned her master’s degree there. She made the dean’s list each semester and was encouraged to apply to graduate school, landing her at Washington State University where she earned her Ph.D. She’s been teaching classes at PLU since 2006.

The key to persistence for marginalized students, and subsequently their success, is building support systems similar to the ones she had, Chávez said. To get there, she says leaders should avoid polarizing, zero-sum approaches to solutions and exhibit compassion for all sides.

“It’s really about getting us together and making this society better,” she said. “These conversations have to happen. But they have to happen better, more thoughtfully.”

Emily Davidson ’98 pursued the study of Spanish, in part, to prove herself to her grandmother.

“I wanted to prove to her that I was really Latina,” she said, with a laugh.

Davidson, now an assistant professor of Hispanic studies at Pacific Lutheran University, says many of her college experiences — including traveling by herself to her mother’s home country Panama after graduation — were motivated by a desire to show her family she was authentically one of them.

Eventos — ella como testigo ; events as Menchú witnessed them.

Descripciones de la violencia ; descriptions of the violence.

Historias personales de la concientizacíon ; personal stories of how she developed a critical consciousness (or in millennial speak, they joked, how Menchú “got woke”).

And, fittingly, género literario del testimonio ; literary genre of testimony, which privileges memories and personal experiences.

Sharing personal experiences, in many ways, lies at the heart of Davidson’s heritage speakers course series. It’s designed to pull from and empower the personal histories of the Latino students who take it — an academic approach rarely offered to them in U.S. classrooms, Davidson says.

“We get to channel our own experiences into what we write,” Sharlene Rojas Apodaca ’21 said of her class.

Rojas Apodaca is one of many first-year students, past and present, to join the cohort of heritage Spanish speakers. She’s also one of many first-generation college students to enroll.

The small, seminar-style courses are designed to hone participants’ Spanish skills: academic writing, grammar, vocabulary and awareness of “linguistic registers,” or the way that language shifts based on context or communication goals. They also introduce students to the broad histories and cultures of Hispanic countries around the world, as well as the U.S.

“Unfortunately, we live in a country that doesn’t really value bilingualism,” Davidson said. “They have distinct talents that we need to help support and develop.”

Davidson designed the course series, now in its third year, as a hybrid between cultural studies and language learning. It offers bilingual students the rare opportunity to develop both languages simultaneously and in community.

It also aims to destigmatize the use of so-called “slang,” or less formal ways of speaking.

“It’s not seeing them as a population with special needs,” Davidson stressed. “It’s seeing them as a population with special skills.”

Francisco Aragón ’19 — a Mexican-American who took Davidson’s heritage speakers class his first year at PLU — appreciated that intentional approach.

“She doesn’t use Spanish to correct how you talk, but rather explains why you talk the way you do,” Aragón said, noting that it was counter to his experience taking some Spanish classes in high school.

“The goal is to empower students by establishing a greater language repertoire,” Davidson said.

The springtime discussion illustrated how students work to expand that repertoire. While discussing her view of Menchú’s testimonial, one student switched to English to clarify the translation of “terminology” (terminología ).

Beyond language, though, students embrace their culture and learn about others — addressing shared experiences, as well as those unique from their own.

“It’s an invitation to critically examine what it means to be Latino in the United States,” Davidson said.

Students in the cohorts claim a variety of backgrounds — with families from countries all over Central and South America, for example — and their majors are as diverse as they are: biology, education, philosophy, social work, kinesiology, and more.

But Davidson said their shared experiences are key to creating the sense of community, a primary factor that has contributed to the cohorts’ near-perfect retention rate, despite the challenges first-generation students of color often face coming into a predominantly white institution.

“It’s powerful when you can come together with a group of people who share similar experiences with you,” Davidson said. “It’s sort of like a homeroom. It’s a place of belonging. It’s a place where you feel like ‘everybody in here gets me.’”

Valeria Pinedo Chipana ’20, an engineering student, registered for the class in 2016 hoping for that built-in community. During her high school years in predominantly white schools in University Place, she had to branch out to surrounding Tacoma, Parkland and Spanaway schools to meet other people of color.

After joining the heritage speakers cohort, Pinedo Chipana gained so much more, particularly a heightened ability to communicate with her relatives from Peru, where she was born.

“My parents know all the history,” she said. “I was able to relate more to what they were talking about. When I learned about the history, I could finally understand what they were talking about.”

Rojas Apodaca, a philosophy and Hispanic studies double major, says her learning also extends outside the classroom. “We always talk about it in other classes and at home,” she said.

Rojas Apodaca, who was raised by a single mother and moved to the U.S. from Mexico when she was 8 years old, says her identity as a first-generation student is just as salient as her other intersecting identities.

Davidson’s cohort allows her to discuss the struggles she shares with her peers. Among them, balancing her responsibilities at home — helping with bills, working multiple jobs — with the high expectations she sets for herself academically.

“We’re all having this kind of unique, shared experience not only being first-generation, but also being Latina women and trying to get our education,” Rojas Apodaca said of her all-female class this semester. “And not having that define us, but having it be a part of us.”

Despite the challenges, Rojas Apodaca stresses the strengths she’s gained from her background. Her mother never made her or her siblings feel like they went without, and inspired them to speak success into existence. That upbringing taught Rojas Apodaca to take ownership of her future, and informs her continued path toward law school.

“She was always very motivating, and I think that transcended into my own motivation,” Rojas Apodaca said. “She’s a really good role model for me.”

Cristina Flores ’19, who is majoring in psychology with a minor in Hispanic studies, says her first-generation identity in relation to others in the heritage speakers class is complicated.

She sometimes feels like she’s “faking it,” since her mom attended some college in her home nation of Peru and her dad earned a graduate degree before becoming a systems engineer back home. Her aunts and uncles — among them dentists and neurosurgeons — also had a sense of belonging in academia and spoke the language of higher education.

“There’s definitely a whole lot of framework I have to build up for myself as a first-gen student,” he said. “Really becoming my own parental figure. I know I have to be on top of things.”

And he and his peers who are blazing the trail bring a different perspective to the table, he stressed. “I think they bring, in a sense, hope,” Aragón said. “Regardless of where we’re coming from, despite all these odds, we’re willing to be dedicated to our education.”

Rojas Apodaca underscored that benefit. She said first-in-the-family students offer a dynamic perspective that helps professors improve how they teach, and PLU is better for it.

“We’re very excited to learn, we’re excited to get involved and we’re excited to participate in class,” she said. “My peers can learn from me.”

Davidson says that same excitement and pride students show for their culture is one of the most rewarding parts of the courses she’s created. And it begins with early recruiting, before students even step foot on campus their first semester.

“That’s a labor of love,” she said. “I’m a heritage speaker and I really believe in this powerful experience exploring who you are through your language in college. It changed my life and I want students to experience that. It’s very personal.”

There’s something about Laree Winer’s chair.

I knew writing a story about first-in-the-family college graduates meant talking about my parents. I didn’t think it meant crying about my mom with a colleague I’m just getting to know.

There’s a chance Winer ’15, associate director for student engagement and the Center for Vocation at Pacific Lutheran University, expected it.

“This work is emotional to me,” she said, fighting through tears, amid my poor attempt to do the same.

That is until Winer intervenes. She doesn’t minimize their priorities: getting a great job, earning a good salary, making their family proud. Still, she helps the students discover the complete picture of success.

“We’ll talk about hard things. Fear. Doubt,” Winer said. “A lot of my support is helping them be courageous.”

And Winer knows firsthand what it takes to find courage.

She’s a first-generation graduate who navigated a long, winding path to a religion bachelor’s degree from PLU. It took two attempts to earn an associate degree from Pierce College, with a wedding and a baby in between. After five years working in the medical field and welcoming her second child, she thought she would go back to school for nursing.

“I had an epiphany,” she said. “I can do this, but I don’t know that I should do this.”

So, she didn’t. After eight years as a stay-at-home mom, Winer went back to work in K-12 education. She worked a laundry list of jobs at Cascade Christian Schools in Puyallup, from administrative assistant positions to fundraising work.

After outgrowing those jobs, Winer said, she worked as a professional organizer, pondering her next move.

Though she didn’t know what came next, she knew college was at the top of her list.

“I wanted to finish my degree so much,” she said. “It frustrated me to be in jobs that were just jobs. I didn’t know if the work was meaningful.”

Then, sitting at Marzano Italian Restaurant with her husband in 2005, Winer spotted banners across the way that spoke to her: “What will you do with your one wild and precious life? What’s your vocation?”

PLU’s mission found Winer in the right place at the right time. She snagged an informational interview with human resources, thanks to a client’s connection to the Office of Advancement.

“I just started applying for anything I could to get my foot in the door here at PLU,” she said.

An administrative job with the Division of Social Sciences in 2006 led to valuable mentorship by faculty members, who quickly realized Winer was overqualified for the work she was doing. She eventually landed in Student Life, where she remains today, and started pursuing her degree in 2009.

Winer took a class every term while working full time for the university, finishing with a 3.98 grade-point average upon graduating in 2015. The only B on her transcript was in philosophy.

Winer’s dad, who proudly watched his daughter cross the commencement stage on her 50th birthday, is pragmatic and sharp. “My dad has a tremendous work ethic,” she said. “He’s really smart. He reads voraciously.”

Tears welled as I talked to Winer about her parents — because they remind me of mine.

My mom dropped out of high school not once, but twice. I was in eighth grade before I found out. That’s when my mom was studying for the test to earn a GED certificate, right before she took an entry-level job at a title company. After years of working her way through the ranks, she became a licensed limited practice officer and subsequently one of the top escrow closers in her company. Now, she’s a manager who has transformed the performance of the branch she leads.

And she’s one of the smartest people I know.

“I am not ashamed of it at all,” my mom recently told me. “I feel like my story could inspire someone.”

Just like Winer’s dad, mine has an unwavering work ethic. I don’t have the space to list all the jobs my dad has worked. He excelled equally in all of them. But my dad’s biggest impact on me has been his relentless consumption of newspapers and his staunch life lessons.

He has an associate degree, and started studying business finance at the University of Alaska Juneau before a great job opportunity in retail management and building a family took him down a different path.

Still, the practical side of being first in the family adds value to the overall college experience that other students may not reap.

“They come with a realistic knowledge of the outside world,” Winer said. “They come fully aware of the challenges, fully aware of the obstacles. And yet they still, despite full knowledge of those things, have incredible hope. They have a grit and resiliency and work ethic.”

And they approach their education with eyes wide open.

“First-gen students have an eagerness, they have an appreciation, they have an openness to not just the content, but the mentoring that is readily available here,” Winer said. “There’s such a hunger for mentoring.”

Eva Frey ’95 was always the smart girl.

“The most salient identity up to that point in my life was that of a student,” she said of her teenage self. “So what else was I going to do but go to college?”

Despite coming from parents who couldn’t afford to pursue higher education, Frey says it was never a question for her and her sister. “The active conversation in our family was ‘you girls will have more than what your father and I had.’”

That included swimming and piano lessons, trips to museums, and anything they needed to thrive at school.

“I was first in the family, but I was also free and reduced lunch — government cheese and peanut butter and the whole nine yards,” said Frey, now the dean of students at PLU. “But my parents never made us feel like we didn’t have enough to do whatever we wanted to do.”

When she came to the university, she didn’t know who around her shared a similar background.

“When I was here as a college student, you did not tell people you were first in the family,” she said. “I knew for sure people could tell I was first in the family because I didn’t have a bathrobe. All the other kids on the wing had a bathrobe.”

It was an item, among many, that didn’t jump out as a necessity to a family who lacked the cultural capital to anticipate how to prepare for college.

It wasn’t until Frey told me about her experience with a residence-hall fire alarm sans bathrobe that I realized I didn’t have a bathrobe during my time living at PLU, either.

It wasn’t for a lack of preparation, though. Despite living nearby, my mom compiled a massive list of must-haves before I hauled my things to Harstad Hall in fall 2007.

I didn’t have a bathrobe, but I definitely had a shower caddy.

As for Frey, her dad bought an elaborate “shower caboodle” that stood tall and doubled as a seat with storage. “My dad had a very literal interpretation of what was needed to come to college,” she said, adding that her parents were “all in.”

Frey says these experiences inform how she approaches student development in her role at PLU, especially when dealing with first-generation students. The representation she and other administrators across campus offer helps create a sense of belonging that wasn’t as accessible in the past.

“Representation is important because education is about growing your knowledge base and your experience base,” Frey said. “And that doesn’t just happen by what you learn in the classroom, it happens by who you sit next to.”

And, Frey added, sometimes the person you sit next to may represent perspectives that are invisible.

It’s why Elizabeth Barton, psychologist and associate director for training and outreach in PLU’s Counseling Center, stresses that representation alone isn’t enough. “We have to articulate that experience,” Barton said. “Just being is not the same as advocating and sharing that story. There’s such power in finding like-minded people.”

When I was at PLU as a student, I didn’t talk about my experience as a first-generation student, mainly because I was unaware that it was remarkable. Still, I always felt like I was on an island. At the time, I failed to articulate why I struggled to relate to my peers.

Now, I understand what made me different, and I envy the first-in-the-family students who can see themselves modeled — and celebrated — in the administration.

“Not only are there a lot of us, we don’t try to hide our identity,” Frey said. “We invite and we normalize that first-in-the-family exists. We don’t shame it.”

Frey says PLU is leaving behind the so-called deficit model of approaching first-in-the-family support, which can push those student narratives to the shadows.

“By bringing it out in the open we are pushing ourselves, as an institution, to increase the capacity to understand the opportunities and strengths of those who are first in the family and help them be even more successful,” she said. “It’s part of the fabric of this place.”

Frey admits her title sometimes makes it harder for first-generation students to see their experiences in her. But often it shows them what’s possible.

“Being Dr. Frey, being the dean of students, stands about 50 feet in front of me. And there are students who can never get over that,” Frey said. “Then there are students who get over it, and find me a role model of what can be achieved. And then there are students who actually engage with me in conversation about how do you do this.”

She also admits there are times when she hides her title — in part to avoid “flaunting it,” but also to settle into the space between the academic world and the world that came before it.

“I work in education, so I live in a cerebral world,” she said. “My entire family lives in a military world.”

She recalls a recent conversation with her sister — who holds a graduate degree from Georgetown University: “Why do you always have to use the biggest words possible?” Frey recalled her asking. “Normal people don’t sound like you, Eva.”

Barton says code-switching — or constantly shifting between cultural identities — is common for first-generation college students. It can involve balancing the desire for new opportunities with the nagging pressure not to get “too big for your britches,” she said.

“It’s feeling like they don’t belong in either world,” Barton said.

However, Barton added, students caught in the middle of the two worlds also benefit from the push and pull. “They get to decide what to accept and reject,” she said, embracing identity development more intentionally.

When I code-switch, I find myself yearning to transfer the most valuable parts of my college experience to my family. Specifically, the PLU brand of vocation.

My parents have always worked good jobs. More recently, those good jobs have come with even better salaries.

Following an after-hours work gathering she organized for her staff, my mom called to share a feeling of fulfillment I’ve rarely seen in her when discussing her work.

“I’m just so happy with what I do,” she told me. “And I’m so good at it.”

Little did I realize at the time, that moment stayed with me. It bubbled to the surface as I sat across from Winer in the chair.

“Your mom is such a perfect example of the freedom,” Winer said. “The reason why you get so emotional about it is because you’re hearing her freedom. You’re seeing her emerge and be whole, and be awesome in ways that you haven’t seen before. And that’s powerful.”

Acting President Allan Belton says he was the “quirky brainiac” growing up — the youngest of eight with parents who were products of the Great Depression.

But unlike his colleague Frey, Belton never talked about college at home.

“It was a big deal to be the first,” he said. “Nobody had that personal experience, so we didn’t talk about it.”

That changed when a new counselor arrived at Zillah High School, which only had about 150 kids at the time. Belton still remembers her name: Karin Thompson.

“She saw something in me that I didn’t see in my future,” he recalled.

The counselor convinced Belton’s friends to drive him to and from the SAT, to guarantee he took the test. After that she asked him, along with a couple of his peers, to complete a form and an essay.

“I didn’t know what it was for,” Belton said.

When Thompson handed him the envelope that notified him of his full-ride scholarship to any state school in Washington, she asked him what it meant to him.

Even then, he wasn’t sure: “I think it means I’m going to college,” he recalled saying. “It was quite a shock. I had never visited a university.”

Soon, that changed. After a tour around the state, he chose Washington State University. He still remembers standing outside his residence hall with a single box and a fast-food burger, alone and bewildered.

“I didn’t know how to check into my room,” he said. It wasn’t until well into his first year that he learned about the concept of dropping classes. “I had to go through those processes on my own.”

Belton knows other first-generation college students — at PLU and beyond — have similar stories. He also knows, and appreciates, the valuable lessons learned from them.

“A lot of first-gens are just self sufficient in many ways when it matters,” Belton said. “You have to have some level of independence. Teaching yourself how to do things despite nobody showing you how.”

Belton gained a lot of independence even before coming to college: he worked countless jobs in orchards, raised pigs, stocked shelves at a local grocery store, babysat neighbors. He even did his parents’ taxes from the time he was 13, since neither of them graduated high school.

“I don’t know if we do enough, and I don’t know if you can ever do enough,” Belton stressed. “One of the biggest challenges any university has in serving first-in-the-family students, and the biggest challenge any first-in-the-family student has, is finding each other.”

First-generation students don’t often “raise their hands” to be identified, Belton added. “They will pretend they fit,” he said. “They don’t want to stand out.”

The culture at PLU is working to foster a sense of pride among those who come first. “The only reason I would say we’re doing better is because we’re talking about it,” Belton said. “It’s tough as a first-gen, but the most important thing you can do is be loud and proud about it. No one is going to know you’re first-gen unless you say it. And it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s something to be proud of.”

And there’s a lot to be proud of: self-reliance, understanding the value of a dollar, owning your success, and changing the story for those who come after you.

Belton, who was dubbed “Harvard” by his family after heading to college, became a role model for younger members of his very large family.

“Everybody just started going to college,” he said. Nearly all of Belton’s nieces and nephews earned degrees, he added. “That’s probably my favorite part of the story of being first-gen. I won’t be last-gen.”

More importantly, PLU students can look to Belton — and Frey, and Winer, and roughly 60 faculty and staff members across campus — and see the possibilities for themselves.

I am so proud to be first, for all that’s mentioned above and more. And while I’m grateful for the cultural capital I’ve gained from my college experience — to inevitably pass on later — I sincerely hope I find a way to transfer what I gained from a lack thereof.