“It's because of me – I made myself get here”: First-Generation College Students in STEM Motivations for, and Experiences with, Academic Advising

Authors

• Desiree Forsythe, Santa Clara University
• Amy C. Moors, Chapman UniversityFollow
• Quaylan Allen, Chapman UniversityFollow
• Jeremy L. Hsu, Chapman UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-28-2026

Abstract

Academic advising plays a major role in shaping undergraduate life sciences students’ experiences through college. However, despite the critical nature of advising, there have been relatively few studies examining students’ experiences with advising and how these experiences may influence their academic journeys. Here, we investigate first-generation college students’ experiences with academic advising in biology and throughout STEM. Through the lens of community cultural wealth, we found several themes such as balancing independence and pressures to succeed, identity as a source for empowerment and motivation, wanting reassurance and support from advisors, as well as negative outcomes during interactions with advisors. We also provide recommendations from student participants on how to improve academic advising. This research adds to the limited, but growing, body of literature on academic advising broadly, and within biology and other STEM fields specifically.

Comments

This article was originally published in CBE—Life Sciences Education, volume 25, issue 2, in 2026. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.25-08-0176

Recommended Citation

Forsythe, D., Moors, A. C., Allen, Q., & Hsu, J. L. (2026). “It's because of me – I made myself get here”: First-Generation College Students in STEM Motivations for, and Experiences with, Academic Advising. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 25(2), ar21. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.25-08-0176

Copyright

The authors/The American Society for Cell Biology

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.