Career Counselors Self-Disclosing to First-Generation College Students: A Grounded Theory Study

Abstract

Financial security is cited among reasons why first-generation college students (FGCS) pursue higher education, yet the literature advocating the pursuit of a bachelor’s degree for its perceived value in the employment marketplace fails to include the need for career exploration and planning during the college years. The purpose of this grounded theory study was to examine how career counselors who had been the first in their families to go to college use their personal experience to support current FGCS. The findings of the study suggest that career counselors who share personal, relevant stories from their own college experiences can counter students’ feelings of isolation and confusion regarding career exploration and planning. Further, findings suggest that career counselors who actively partner with academic and student life colleagues on their campuses help FGCS students form a network of contacts, subsequently creating equitable social capital opportunities for all students.

How individual experiential backgrounds are related to the development of employability among university students

“…In any case, various studies including this one highlight that it is prejudiced to regard first-generation students primarily through a deficit-oriented lens. In addition, career counsellors, who have been first-generation students themselves, are well placed to support their students by self-disclosing this aspect of their own biography (Krieger Cohen & Johnson, 2020). In this way, career counsellors can mitigate first-generation students' feelings of isolation and of insecurity regarding their future careers and above that strengthen FGS' emotional connectedness with their institution and HE in general.…”

STEM Stories: Fostering STEM Persistence for Underrepresented Minority Students Attending Predominantly White Institutions

“…While this study focused on URM student experiences, it would be important to examine the experiences of faculty and supervisors to learn more about the mentoring relationship from their perspective. In particular, if some of the faculty members themselves identified as URM and/or first-generation students, this inquiry would merit further attention to learn more about the mentoring relationship (Krieger-Cohen & Johnson, 2020). Since the URM student definition was bounded by the program guidelines, it would be more engaging to explore the experiences of other marginalized student groups beyond this definition; this includes certain immigrant college students (e.g., Asian and Asian American student populations, among others).…”

Confusion and Countermeasures of College Students’ Career Guidance Work Based on Deep Learning Models

“…The function supports students to upload the source of origin independently by the institution of the information reported by the students on the second level of review, and the change will be audited and sent to the student information. The data management subsystem module belongs to an auxiliary tool, which can assist the system in carrying out two-way data exchange with other systems in order to facilitate the user's use of the system for data import and export; the fields and data of the module should be designed to ensure the unity of the format between the two [21][22].…”