CISS Affiliate Helps Give Rise to “Life-changing” Center for First-Generation Students
It started, like many things in the world of higher education, with a report: in 2018, this one landed on the desk of Robert A. Brown, who was in his 13th year as the president of Boston University. His own education experience had been both bumpy and gratifying—a University of Texas at Austin graduate, he was the first member of his family to attend college, but it all happened on what he says was “a financial shoestring.”
The report was one of those good-news, bad-news documents. The good news was that BU was doing a better job than ever helping provide need-based financial aid and Pell grants to first-generation students—and that the graduation rate for those students was excellent. The bad news? Those same first-gen students were not experiencing or enjoying BU in the same ways as their peers with college-educated parents and from typically more affluent backgrounds.
It was as if they were attending BU—but not truly able to appreciate the full BU experience.
“The first-gens had fewer internships and fewer of them studied abroad,” Brown recalls. “The report pointed to the need for resources and advising.”
To read more, visit BU Today where this article originally appeared on March 20, 2025.