When Abena Marfo crosses the stage on May 14 to accept the three degrees she is earning from SMU, her commencement regalia will include a special honor. In addition to the blue gown and red stole all SMU graduates wear, she’ll be among the first students to wear a white stole with a logo honoring her as a first-generation graduate of SMU.

“We know that being a first-generation student takes a lot of courage,” says Briana Morales, a graduate assistant for SMU’s First-Generation Initiative program who drove the idea for the first-generation stole. “It takes a lot of bravery to do something that wasn’t modeled by your family.”

Briana was the first in her family to earn a college degree, graduating from SMU in 2021 with a degree in psychology. Now she is earning a Master’s in counseling from SMU’s Simmons School of Education and Human Development and mentoring other SMU first-generation undergraduates.

According to the Education Advisory Board, 33 percent of first-generation students won’t last longer than three years at college, compared to 14 percent of students whose parents have Bachelor’s degrees.

As an undergraduate at SMU, Briana also considered giving up on her college graduation goal. After struggling through her first two semesters at SMU, balancing multiple jobs, lacking family support and performing below her academic potential, she received an e-mail that offered hope. The email connected her to Matthew Robinson, director of Student Persistence and Achievement at SMU’s Center for Academic Excellence, who linked her with SMU’s then newly created First-Generation Initiative program and resources that helped her academically, financially and socially.

“Just having one person believe in me and want me to succeed in what I wanted to do was huge for me,” Morales says. “It helped me start to believe in myself, and that changed everything.”

Resources for students on the SMU campus are abundant, Robinson says. “But finding those resources, and finding time to access those resources can be a challenge for first-generation students.”

Through the First-Generation Initiative, everything from tutoring, to copy machines for printing papers, to study spaces for first-generation students are consolidated into one space in SMU’s Center for Excellence in Armstrong Commons.

Robinson’s support encouraged Briana to create the First-Generation Association, a chartered organization with more than 100 student members. First-generation students are now represented by a dedicated senator in the SMU Student Senate and on the Provost’s Student Advisory Board. In addition, SMU faculty and staff who are first-generation graduates display First-Generation Initiative stickers in their offices to indicate their support – including Provost Elizabeth Loboa and Vice President of Student Affairs K.C. Mmje.

“We’re making SMU a better place,” Morales says.