Daniela – First Generation scholar at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota.

Throughout high school, Daniela took care of her little brother … helped him with his homework as her mother worked.

“I am that role model for my little brother by showing him that just because we do not have the privilege of having a mother and father in the same household, that is not going to stop us from not making our dreams come true,” Daniela says.

It was a difficult time, she says, with nothing to eat some evenings. She was on her own to take responsibility for everything at home.

When it came time for Daniela to get to Chicago for her college entrance interviews, she drove … for the first time ever … yet another challenge.

Now a First Generation scholar at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, Daniela has earned a reputation as someone who reaches for and achieves high goals. A sophomore, she is earning top grades. She has a 3.5 GPA.

“I came here to work,” Daniela says. She carries 17 or 18 credit hours each semester, and when confronted with a difficult course, she visits professors each day with questions and for mentoring.

“My dream is to graduate college, attend law school and go into the field of international affairs, helping people in poorer countries.”

Today, at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, he talks about the unwavering sense of family and support he receives from the FGI program and the importance of feeling safe during his years at college, away from the gangs that roamed his former neighborhood.

Santiago – First Generation scholar, Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota

Despite a clear vision of his future, Santiago’s past … his childhood … was not easy. His parents were not married and had problems as a couple. His alcoholic father moved out when he was age seven.

He says that his mother became his role model for perseverance and fortitude in the face of adversity, and an enduring inspiration in his young life.

Mugged but not broken.

Even though he says he benefitted greatly from the education he received at a Catholic school just three blocks from his home, he still carries the emotional scar of being attacked and mugged by hoodlums during that short walk.

As Santiago speaks, it’s hard for many of us to imagine the challenging road this young man has already travelled. Quiet spoken but extraordinarily articulate and bright, he reveals that his ultimate hope after graduating university is to open a special school … perhaps a charter school … filled with like-minded teachers determined to make a profound, positive impact on children who have seen cruel hardship. He leaves little doubt but that his dreams will come true.

Brother Ed Siderewicz

Siderewicz – who prefers to be called Brother Ed – is one of the visionary leaders of the pioneering First Generation Initiative at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota.

It is a unique program especially developed to help, to open doors and empower youth who may be financially disadvantaged with a chance at higher education, and provide the support and mentoring they need to help make their dreams come true.

On the one hand, Brother Ed says, First Generation is simple idea … an innocent idea … that today might be changing just a few lives in the process now. But the reality and potential is that it has a transformational effect on the families and communities that surround these children in the urban communities from which they come. We have watched it, he adds.

“The value I see in this program is an intentional step by the university that is literally changing lives of these students … and opens doors to empower these students.”

First Generation Initiative may be small now but it is potent, according to Brother Ed.

“I think a lot of big ideas have started off in a small kind of way … with a single person … a seed of an idea … the kernel of a movement … and they have grown to have a transformational impact on society as a whole. First Generation Initiative is that sort of a movement. It is small, disarming. Yet, there is a power to this movement.”

At its core, says Brother Ed, is the heritage of the Lasallian Brothers, a 332 year old tradition of providing a human and Christian education, especially for those on the margins of society.

She was three years old when her family immigrated to the Minneapolis area from Mexico. Neither of her then-teenage parents had a chance to finish high school because of the need to work hard to support the family, including Mayra and her nine brothers and sisters.

Mayra - First Generation Initiative scholar at Saint Mary's University of Minnesota.

English vocabulary was a challenge for her in high school, she says, because she was living in an English-speaking environment at school and Spanish-speaking at home. Sometimes, she would get both languages mixed up and say words in “Spanglish,” she says with a laugh.

High school was a milestone in her family, Mayra says, because she was the first to reach such a high level of education. It became a family experience. She experienced and shared new things that she and her family had never heard of … such as homecoming, proms, school dances and pep rallies. It was a new and enjoyable experience for Mayra and her family.

As a sophomore in the First Generation Initiative (FGI) at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, Mayra views her education path as a new tradition in her family, as a role model for her siblings even though being away from the close-knit family has been difficult at times.

Mayra’s academic focus at Saint Mary’s is on fashion marketing. Even though she considered the idea of modeling, the lure of creating marketing strategies in the fashion world is most interesting.

Her greatest desire … Mayra’s guiding light … is to make her parents proud of her. She hopes her future … her career path … will be successful but she is determined not to allow work to take her far from her culture of family in Minneapolis.

“When I came home that day,” she says, “I realized that my father would have to become both father and mother to us from then on.”

Now, when she talks of her father, Octavia’s face lights up with love and respect for her father’s dedication to his children.

Octavia - First Generation scholar, Saint Mary

Now a freshman scholar in the First Generation Initiative program at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, Octavia can remember a time of living with her parents and younger brother, attending Catholic schools and living with no hardships in a neighborhood that she describes as “beautiful.”

“This loss helped me realize,” Octavia says, “that God doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle.” Today, she believes that her mother’s death eventually led to a blessing.

Faced with family financial challenges, her determination and good grades led her to Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, and the First Generation Initiative.

Octavia has already decided her career path. When she graduates from Saint Mary’s, she plans to attend dental school and become a dentist in private practice … back home in the Chicago neighborhood where she grew up.

She was inspired by her family’s dentist, a man who is dedicated to giving back to the community just as he receives, Octavia says with great admiration. She intends to continue that spirit of service to her community as a dentist.

A couple from Minnesota heard of the plight of orphans in Sierra Leone and adopted Ibrahim when he was 13. More than that, his adoptive parents recognized a young man with exceptional intelligence and helped launch him on an educational journey that included the International Academy of Minnesota.

Ibrahim - First Generation scholar, Saint Mary

When it was time for college, Ibs (as he likes to be called) was well-prepared. He had achieved exceptional grades.

Yet, even though he had many choices for higher education, he says that most of the interviews he experienced were disappointing. University recruiters talked only about their schools rather than how the schools could help, guide, and mentor him, he explains. All that changed, he says, when he visited Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota.

“At the interview, it was all about how they were going to help me … that was the main topic,” says Ibs. “I made up my mind right on the spot … based on how Saint Mary’s said they can help me and what they can do for me.”

Today, Ibs has a four-year First Generation Initiative scholarship at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota. And, he has a life-plan taking shape for after graduation.

He is studying to become a K through 8th grade mathematics teacher and soccer coach. Soccer has been his lifelong passion.

Yet, his greatest hope is to have the financial means to return to Sierra Leone one day to perhaps open an orphanage and school and share what he has learned. It is his dream to help children there who have been less fortunate than him.

For starters, Ibs is working with his counselor at Saint Mary’s to plan a study abroad semester at the orphanage in Sierra Leone where he spent several years as a child.

“I have been through a lot in my life but there are others who have had it much worse.”

Jane Anderson, Ph.D., First Generation Initiative, Saint Mary's University of Minnesota.

Preparation for a college education, Dr. Anderson says, begins with getting K through 12 students ready … and, that’s the challenge. With the populations of inner cities swelling with economically disadvantaged children, a shrinking middle class and many parents who are first generation and may never have attended college, academic leaders must focus first on programs to help K – 12 students, 40 percent of whom are minority. In a few decades, today’s minorities will become the majority.

One of Dr. Anderson’s responsibilities is to oversee Saint Mary’s special Countdown to College, a four-year summer academic boot camp designed for first generation high school students whose parents did not have the opportunity to go to college.

The program is a partnership with the NativityMiguel Network of Jesuit and Christian Brothers’ schools located in Minneapolis, Chicago, Tucson and Milwaukee.  Beginning the summer after eighth-grade graduation, the students attend classes in reading, writing, grammar, vocabulary and math at the Saint Mary’s campus to boost their skills, confidence, and knowledge of how to negotiate the academic world of college.

Those inner city students will be first in line to receive a First Generation Initiative (FGI) scholarship. As FGI scholars at the university, they will face a program of high expectations and exceptional support, including mandatory daily study halls, personalized mentoring, literary specialists and achieving academic benchmarks.

What we are finding, says Dr. Anderson, is that our FGI scholars develop a special level of learning discipline. For example, if they don’t understand something or encounter difficulty, they waste no time in going to instructors for help. The FGI students attend classes well prepared. Their instructors comment often on the high level of engagement that FGI Scholars bring to their classes.

“We are seeing the success, and that is better preparing the university for the students of the future and the changing needs for helping youth to achieve higher education in America,” observes Dr. Anderson.

Janet Willis

While her title is literary specialist in the First Generation Initiative program, Janet spends long days listening and advising students who come to her about academic or personal challenges and problems.

By all appearances, she is the surrogate mom for the scholars. She is someone who is trusted but also sets boundaries and enforces rules.

Janet is a warmly spirited middle-aged mother herself from Australia who naturally knows the value of love, safety and guidance for young adults, especially bright young achievers who have risen from difficult home environments. She knows when to be firm and when to praise.

All aspects of Janet’s role are intended to optimize the academic success of the First Generation scholars at Saint Mary’s University, she says.

Janet Willis counsels a First Generation scholar.

Janet’s work is to develop relationships with instructors so that if concerns arise about any scholar’s academic work, she can quickly respond and intervene to resolve what’s happening. Perhaps it’s called active mentoring. Regardless, Janet’s job ranges from listening to advice-giving, providing a much-needed hug or a late night reminder to get to bed.