Tag: resources

Posted on

Setting the Example: How First-Gen Students Raise the Bar & Their Debt to Better Themselves

Setting the Example: How First-Gen Students
Raise the Bar, and their Debt, to Better Themselves


University of Arkansas first-generation students have decreased over the years, but the student loan debt has steadily increased and exceeded Arkansas’ average over the past 5 years, according to the College Scoreboard, a Department of Education database.

By Elena Ramirez
The Razorback Reporter

When individuals gain higher education, they accomplish the most effective way to raise their families’ income, according to research from the National Center for Children in Poverty. Yet higher education is expensive and intimidating, especially for first-generation students, who often have little background in navigating through the unknown world of federal loans, private loans and applications. 

Emily Beltran is a Rogers New Technology High School senior and prospective UofA Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design student. Photo by Emily Beltran.

“It’s harder because in a way, you’re guiding yourself,” said Emily Beltran, a Rogers New Technology senior and a first-generation student who has been accepted to the University of Arkansas. “Your parents can’t give you much advice … it’s definitely hard not being mentored by your parents.”

The complexity of paying for college is just one of the many issues first-generation students need to resolve on their own. The average debt for first-generation students at the University of Arkansas has increased by 12.3% to $14,423 in 2018, over the past five years, according to College Scorecard, a Department of Education database. Dekarius Dawson, first-generation senior music major studying voice, said he has struggled with his out-of-state tuition rate. The native of Memphis, Tennessee has attended the UofA for three years and will be graduating in December with more than $29,000 of federal student loan debt, double the amount for first generation students at the U of A.

Despite that amount of debt, Dawson notices the important precedent of his work.

“To me and my family, this is a huge accomplishment, because I’m setting an example for my brothers and others in Memphis,” he said. “Receiving a degree is the new standard I’m trying to start.” 

Dekarius Dawson is a first-generation student at the UofA. He will graduate this fall with a vocal music degree that he completed in three years. Photo by Elena Ramirez.

Dawson became a part of the UofA’s First-Generation Mentoring Program. He was paired with professor Timothy Thompson, who was also a first-generation college student in 1971.

Thompson recalled he was able to receive his undergraduate degree without acquiring student loans. “I can’t imagine being an undergraduate student these days and coming into these five sometimes six-figure loans and not having any idea if you will have a job when you get out of school,” Thompson said.

The three-year-old program, funded by the Honors College, provides students a mentor on campus. Students have to be the first in their family to attend a four-year college.

Despite the 12.3% increase in debt for first-generation students, enrollment for trends are heading in the other direction:  first-generation enrollment has declined 3% over the past four years. The decrease of first-generation students is something that Chancellor Steinmetz is focused on with the new student success center that will open in the Spring 2021, said Ramon Balderas, student development specialist. “We grew very fast over the past 10 years. We are still trying to adjust to the changes,” said Balderas. “Our resources are very spread out and the new student center will help students.” About 26% of the UofA’s student population is first-generation.

Thompson has been a leader in the First-Generation Mentoring Program. Photo by Elena Ramirez.

The UA Student Support Services is a federally funded program that helps first-generation and low-income students. The program serves 325 students a year.

One local high school is working to support first generation students for life after campus. Two counselors at Rogers New Technology High School are pursuing initiatives on their campus to ensure students have a plan for after high school. Counselor Cindy Caudle said the Rogers New Technology High School principal wants “no graduate to be left on their parents couch in June.” Brenda Walkenbach, who has had 25 years of experience in high school counseling, wants to present high school students with multiple options. “It may not include college, it may be the workforce or the military,” she said.  Caudle added that a number of students enlisted in the National Guard or fully enlisted in a branch of the military as a means to pay for college.

Every second Tuesday of the month, students and their parents meet at Rogers New Technology High School for a “Senior Wrap Session” where they are provided with guidance about post-secondary school options and resources.

High school counselors Brenda Walkenbach (left) and Cindy Caudle (right) help students prepare with the next steps after high school. Photo by Elena Ramirez.

Beltran, a Rogers New Technology student recently accepted into the UofA’s Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, said she will be the first in her family to attend a four-year college. She is a part of the Early College Experience program, where she attends Northwest Arkansas Community College while enrolled in high school. She will graduate from community college with an associate’s degree. 

Beltran has applied to approximately three scholarships so far and is relying on family support for the amount that cannot be covered, she said. She isn’t familiar with the loan process and has been intimidated by the essay portion of scholarships.

“Writing has always been my weakest subject, but I can go to NWACC’s (Northwest Arkansas Community College) writing center and I know they can help me there,” Beltran said.

Being first-generation motivates her to accomplish school and to better herself, she said. It will bring a change for her family. 

She knows that school comes at a high expense, but said getting her prerequisites out of the way “is like a stress taken off of [her] shoulders.” 

The cost of school, she said, will not hold her back.

Posted on

AccessABLE

Campus Organization Aims to Connect Faculty, Staff to Disability Resources


“If we as a society recognized the value that [people with disabilities] have because of the limitations they were born with –– if we recognized the critical thinking and problem solving skills that they have had to develop –– the need for access would disappear overnight.” — George Turner, Division of Student Affairs

By Kate Duby
The Razorback Reporter

George Turner was born paralyzed from the waist down, but he taught himself to walk by the time he was 5 years old. He uses a wheelchair to navigate the UA campus, where he works in the Division of Student Affairs.

Since Turner arrived at the UofA 10 years ago as a student, he has seen accessibility improve greatly. He thinks the university has grown in acknowledging the need for accessibility, and officials have gone out of their way to meet his needs, he said.

Turner now serves as staff adviser for AccessABLE, the UofA’s first disability resource group for faculty and staff, which met for the first time in October.

What began as a project in one graduate student’s service learning class evolved into AccessABLE.

Co-founder Kelly Dundon, who is getting her master’s degree in social work, noticed that while the UA campus offers many resources for students with disabilities, it offers few for faculty and staff, she said.

“We found that there are more resources for other, sort of, identity or diversity groups, but there wasn’t really a collective group of individuals when it came to the topic of disability,” Dundon said.

The group, which meets the first day of every month, aims to create a centralized body that engages in disability education, Dundon said.

“When we founded this group,” Dundon said, “we knew that our expertise started and ended with bringing people into the same space.”

Rather than being an advocacy group, AccessABLE serves as a platform for connecting members to available resources and starting a discussion on disability education.

Dundon and classmates Gonzalo Camp and Adam Laffiteau, co-founders of AccessABLE, organized an event for disability education and advocacy for their service learning project in the spring, Dundon said. The event featured a short film and a panel of four speakers who offered perspective on disability and shared their experiences.

Building from the momentum of the event, Dundon and her co-founders began partnering with the UA Office of Diversity and Inclusion to create AccessABLE, she said.

Turner thinks AccessABLE allows people with varying needs to connect with resources more easily, he said. He looks forward to seeing how the program will grow and in what direction the founders will take it in the future.

Turner also thinks the general demand for accessibility would decrease if more attitudes shifted to understand that people with disabilities have value to offer because of the limitations they were born with, he said.

“If we recognized the critical thinking and problem-solving skills that they have had to develop, the need for access would disappear overnight,” Turner said.

Turner thinks many qualified people are overlooked for job opportunities because of their disabilities, he said. He has seen it become a pattern in hiring practices, and he thinks that although employers might list a multitude of other reasons someone is disqualified, it speaks to a greater bias.

University employees seeking workplace accommodations can initiate the process by sending a request to their dean, department head, director or supervisor, or by contacting the ADA Coordinator in the Office of Equal Opportunity and Compliance (OEOC).

The OEOC provides information on accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and regulates accommodations for university employees.

Posted on

UA Libraries Adapt to Digital Resources

UA Libraries Adapt to Digital Resources

As more resources move online, Mullins Library is adapting its spaces for usage in the digital age. While many universities hop on this trend, the U of A is taking a new approach to accessing online resources.

Empty section in Mullins Library
After books were moved from Mullins Library to the off-campus Annex, the 4th floor of Mullins has opened up for more student usage. Photo by Hanna Ellington

By Hanna Ellington
The Razorback Reporter

In the digital age, Mullins Library is joining other institutions in increasing accessibility to online resources, while also maintaining print assets and physical spaces, librarians said.

More than 1.3 million volumes were removed from Mullins Library in July 2018 into an off-campus annex storage system, said Kelsey Lovewell, director of public relations.

“Moving items to the annex did not increase our need for virtual resources. We’ve been continuously adding to our physical and digital holdings for many years now,” she said.

Books housed in the annex must be requested online and delivered to either Mullins or one of four campus branches.

That system has frustrated some students.

“Honestly, I think the old-school system of just having books in the library that you can go and check out is probably for the best. I feel that because they’re not readily available, people are less likely to use those resources if they know it has to be ordered and delivered,” junior Ethan Barton said.

Mullins Library still houses 200,000 books, Lovewell said, adding that the books were selected to remain based on past usage and relevance to students.

“The books that were selected [for the annex] had not been checked out, I want to say, twice in the past 10 years,” Lovewell said. “We asked for faculty input across campus, we looked at usage statistics, and one important statistic we looked at what books were used in the library but not necessarily checked out.”

Using an off-campus storage space is common for universities, said Dennis Clark, Dean of Libraries. The high-density Library Annex is beneficial for the preservation of the books, with cooler temperatures and lower humidity rates for storage, Clark said.

“There’s not a research university library in this country that doesn’t have off-site storage,” Clark said. “Every significant institution is storing parts of their collection away from their central campus. It’s been the standard for three decades.”

Browsing the off-campus annex is reflective of online shopping, Lovewell said, with books being displayed on online shelves for an experience similar to searching for books in a physical library.

“In today’s day and age, I feel like we’re all very accustomed to online shopping, you know, watching Netflix, browsing for different shows we want to watch. What’s really seamlessly integrated with that is our virtual browsing tool,” Lovewell said. “Our virtual browsing tool puts them on a shelf with other books in the same category so that you can see as though it were in person and open stacks.”

Communication with librarians also has expanded, with lines of communication being available in text messages, phone calls and e-mail form, said Beth Juhl, the Web Services Librarian. Accessibility reaches worldwide as librarians from around the world work in a cooperative group to assist students online.

“We have a cooperative with librarians all over the world. When we’re asleep, the librarians in Australia pick up our questions, and when they’re asleep, we pick up their questions,” Juhl said. “That is a cooperative so students can come into a chat service and ask a question of a librarian anytime, 24/7.”

The shift toward online integration may seem like a loss of libraries, but that’s not the case to Clark, Juhl or Lovewell.

Book shelves sit empty in the library on the 4th floor of Mullins Library. Photo by Hanna Ellington

“If you look at the trend across research libraries and research universities now, the idea that libraries are somehow losing use or losing relevance because of the access to digital resources is widely off,” Clark said. “Every other institution I’ve been in, as we’ve increased the amount of digital resources and as we’ve moved books away from the center part of campus, we’ve seen more use of space.

“Sure, we’ve got books, but we also have spaces that are more engaging,” he said.

As more resources become available online, libraries are using the opportunity to renovate the existing space for improved resources for students.

“We have plans that we will be able to talk about in more depth very soon for a two-phase renovation that will renovate all floors of Mullins in the next five to six years,” Clark said. “So I think what we’ll see is kind of a redefinition of the spaces.”



“Yes, we’ll have a significant print collection in Mullins,” Clark said, “but we’ll also have spaces that are actually made for today’s level of teaching and learning, and spaces that are agile enough for them to evolve in the future.”
Moving forward, Mullins Library is set to transform with the trends of the digital age, Juhl said, but that doesn’t mean libraries will cease to exist.
“I think that they think that a library is just a warehouse of books, which is not what we are. We are services, and we are connections to recorded knowledge,” Juhl said. “That’s never going to go out of style.”

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article reported that moving items to the Library Annex increased the need for virtual resources. This is a clarification.


Posted on

Options Available for University of Arkansas Students Facing Homelessness

Services Available for Students Facing Homelessness

University of Arkansas students facing homelessness have multiple resources available through different organizations, such as 7Hills Homeless Center and the Salvation Army.

Nearly four in 10 college students in a survey of 43,000 reported that they did not have adequate housing, according to a national research on four-year and two-year colleges.

Researchers at Temple University and the Wisconsin HOPE Lab surveyed students from 66 institutions in 20 states and the District of Columbia and concluded that 36% of college students did not have proper housing. They define homelessness as “a person is without a place to live, often residing in a shelter, an automobile, an abandoned building or outside.” They define housing insecurity as students who are staying with friends, struggling to pay rent or need to move frequently.

Data from the UofA on the number of students who face homelessness is not clear. Students are only required to list an address when they apply to the university.

When students apply, they have an address. University officials do not know whether it is not their home address, said Suzanne McCray, vice provost for enrollment and the dean of admissions.

UA freshmen who are under 21 years old and do not live within 70 miles of the campus must live on campus their first year, according to the UA housing page. After their first-year students have the option of moving off campus.

For some students who are in that in-between stage of affording dorms or apartment leases, one option is crashing on couches, moving from place to place and more. Some might end up being classified as homeless.

Homelessness in college students is not what most people consider homelessness, said Kevin Fitzpatrick, a UA sociology and criminology professor.

“They will likely be couch surfing, they won’t be in the places we typically find homeless people,” Fitzpatrick said.

Multiple resources are available for those in need.

The 7Hills Homeless Center serves those in need in northwest Arkansas in a variety of ways. 7Hills has a Day Center that helps meet basic human needs such as meals, showers, storage lockers, laundry, clothing, blankets and a safe mail drop.

The center serves more than 500 individuals a month at the Day Center, according to the 7Hills webpage.

The Walker Family Residential Community, a 7Hills program, provides transitional and permanent supportive housing. The center also has a veterans service program.

The Salvation Army of Northwest Arkansas has served both traditional and nontraditional students, said Ambra Bruce, director of social services for the Salvation Army in Fayetteville

A variety of services are offered such as access to a food pantry, access to a case manager and access to clothing and food vouchers, as well as prescription assistance, Bruce said.

The Salvation Army also has emergency shelters in Fayetteville and Bentonville.

“Quality of life and wellbeing are critical determinants of student success,” Fitzpatrick said.