My Autoethnography Project

For my autoethnography, I am going to cover the topic of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it has impacted the community of first generation college students here at Chapman University. 

Because the COVID-19 pandemic is still in the process of developing, so there aren’t many concrete statistics about it I can include in my autoethnography. Because of this, for the purposes of the assignment I will focus my secondary research on studies and statistics of first generation students. These studies will cover what life is like for first generation students at various universities, and also what life is like for first generation students at Chapman specifically and what services the university provides for them. Using this as my secondary research, I will tie this to the overarching message of my autoethnography.

When first starting my research, I first went to the Chapman University website. This page introduces students to the Promising Futures Program, which is a group made up of first generation students that support each other. According to this web page, roughly 20 percent of Chapman students, as well as many admission counselors, are first-gen themselves. This stuck out to me as an important statistic because it highlights just how small the population of first generation students is here at Chapman. As far as resources on campus goes, this site online lists various resources available to first generation students to make their Chapman experience as seamless and beneficial as possible. Under the section “Campus Resources,” resources such as the Academic Advising Center, Career and Professional Development, the TLT Center, etc are listed. What I found interesting about this is that these opportunities are open to all students and that there are no specified resources tailored to first generation students.

Following this, I decided to broaden my research and look into statistics about first generation university students as a whole. I went to this website for first generation students and found several sheets with statistics on first-gen students. This first sheet highlights the percentage of students who were first generation in 2015-16, which was 24%. This next sheet shows that 65% of freshman students that are enrolled full time are first generation. In this sheet, the graphs show that In their freshman year, a greater percent of first generation than non-first generation students used financial aid services, however, a lower percent of students used health, academic advising, and academic support services.