FirstGen Ahead October, 2019

Founder’s Message FirstGen Ahead is dedicated to empowering first-generation college students to launch into successful careers after college. While there is growing assistance for first-gen students to get to and through college, there is very little support after that. Completing college is a major life accomplishment, but it is not a guarantee of success. This is the first newsletter reporting on the pilot launch of FirstGen Ahead career coaching. I have been working with a great team to launch FirstGen Ahead. The launch follows two years of studying the impact of career coaching, focusing on low-income, first-generation, and students of color. Our model is based on an analysis of the limited existing models of support and identification of gaps in this landscape. FirstGen Ahead is all about supporting first-generation college students through one-on-one career coaching, and an online guided curriculum, which also serves as a peer support group. The focus is on building the understanding, skills, and networks to successfully land a relevant college internship, followed by a strong first position post college.  This pilot has been launched, in part, through a partnership with the Steppingstone Foundation (to recruit students) and Empower Success Corp (to recruit coaches). Ten enterprising students completed the application, interview, and coach selection process. The students are enrolled in private and public colleges in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Oregon and are majoring in business, engineering, health sciences, and social sciences. In total, our amazing coaches bring over 250 years of work experience in a range of industries including technology, health care, sports & entertainment, business, law, higher education, and the not-for-profit sector. In this, our first newsletter, coaches and students will find resources and data to keep informed, engaged, and maybe even inspired.  Susan Gershenfeld, PhD

“Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.” – Maya Angelou

You’re Invited! A networking reception will take place at my home in Auburndale on Sunday, December, 22 from 1:30-3:00pm. This reception is in lieu of the online peer session originally scheduled for that night. This reception will be a great opportunity for coaches and students to meet each other in person and for students to practice networking in a reception-type environment. Other guests who work in the areas of interest to students will also be invited. Please click on this link to RSVP. Note: My husband, Joel, and I live two blocks from the commuter train (Framingham/Worcester line) and just less than a mile from the Riverside T. We look forward to hosting all of you!

Career Coaching: How Confident are FirstGen Ahead Students? Self-efficacy is our personal perception of our ability to succeed in specific situations we encounter in our day-to-day lives and is a quality that, with effort, can improve over time with training and practice. As a pilot program, we’re interested in knowing how confident our FirstGen Ahead students are on a number of factors that can impact their ability to work with a career coach and transition from college to career. As such, an online pre-test was completed by all ten FirstGen Ahead students to assess their levels of confidence related to working with a career coach, understanding themselves, career research & planning, and soft (e.g. networking) and technical skills (e.g. preparing a strong resume). In total, there were 26 question that were answered on a 5-point scale (1=least confident; 5=most confident). Information gleaned from the survey will be used to further shape the curriculum. Some findings related to our start-up phase are shared in aggregate below. Other findings will be shared in future newsletters. A similar post-test will be administered at the end of the 17-month pilot. On most questions, the majority of students rated themselves at 4 or 5, meaning they had stronger confidence in their abilities. This is good news! It’s the areas where the student average was 3.3 or less (not as confident) that additional support is needed. These areas are circled in the charts below. It is recommended that students and coaches discuss these aggregate findings in relation to the student’s individual responses and provide extra support where needed.

Questions for Gaining Insight About Self Students, did you know that about 80% of students in the United States change their majors at least one time, according to the National Center for Education Statistics and that, on average, they change their major at least three times? This suggests that not every college student knows what they want to do for work or for a career when they graduate from college. Gaining that understanding can come from a variety of experiences, reflections, exposures, conversations, and connections.  Here are some questions to think about on your own as well as to discuss with your coach in future sessions as you search for more insight into who you are: 1.  What did you love to do as a child? 2.  What types of things have you done when you found that you were so “into” it that you lost track of time? 3.  What would you do for free? 4.  How do you imagine people would describe you/your work? 5.  What do you believe in? (What values are important to you in an ideal career and would be a deal breaker if they weren’t a part of that work?) 6.  How do you want to change the world? What is the difference you want to make? 7.  What scares you? 8.  Who is your hero and why? 9.  Who do you want to serve? 10. What do you imagine your path to success will look like?

Are you Mentorable? FirstGen students, we recognize that having someone in your corner matters – whether it’s a coach or a mentor. While the lines between the two are often blurred, coaching relationships are more time-bound, proactive, and focus on performance, while mentoring relationships take on a longer time horizon and are reactive. Both roles help build capacity. Have you thought about whether you are mentorable? This link is to an 11-minute Ted Talk (with written content) that identifies characteristics that can help you to be someone whom other people would like to guide.

What We Know from Monthly Reports As you know, we’re asking you, as coaches and students, to complete monthly reports so that we get a sense of what’s happening during your coaching meetings. We have the September reports in our hands, and we’re pleased that almost everyone has reported. Why is this information helpful to us? As this is a pilot, we’re testing our model and will continue to learn from what you tell us about your FirstGen Ahead experiences. Here’s what you told us from the first report: All coaches and students met at least once during month of September, and three coach/student pairs met twice! The length of the meetings ranged from 25 minutes to approximately an hour, with the average length of 50 minutes. In addition to getting to know each other and discussing logistics of future meetings, one-on-one coach-student sessions covered a range of topics, partially guided, when appropriate to the needs of the student, by the online curriculum, and include the following topics. ·          Career interests (discussed by 10 of 10 student/coach pairs; 10/10) ·          Communication preferences (9/10) ·          Network maps (6/10) ·          Relevant articles (2/10) ·          Informational interviews (2/10) ·          Reason for selecting major (1/10) ·          Classes taken to help with career decision making (1/10) ·          Upcoming career fair (1/10) ·          Resume (1/10) ·          Internship applications (1/10) ·          SMART Goals (1/10) ·          Job skills worksheet (1/10) ·          People and things that are inspirational (1/10)

MARK YOUR CALENDAR

COACHES Our first online support session for coaches will be on Sunday, Oct 13 th from 7-8pm EST.  A Zoom invite and link was sent to all coaches. These monthly sessions are an opportunity for coaches to share about their experiences as a FirstGen Ahead coach, to provide one another with professional development “pearls of wisdom” and discuss best practices, and to be briefed on what’s ahead for the next online peer session. We’re fortunate that Dr. Lois Benishek, a career development professional with a passion for promoting the career and life success of first generation college students, will be co-facilitating these coaching support sessions with me. Please email susan@firstgenahead.org with any questions. STUDENTS The second online student session will be on Sunday, October 27 th from 7:30-8:30pm EST.  A Zoom link was sent to all students. Students should come to that session with a completed network map and self-assessment. Among other things, we’ll be discussing and learning from each other, clarifying the action items planned and taken to build and strengthen the student’s network, and discussing the insights the students gained when they completed the self-assessment. Please email susan@firstgenahead.org with any questions.

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