My Journey From a First-Generation Graduate Student to a First-Generation Professor

• In Event: First-Generation Women of Color Professionals: An Examination of the Intersectional Experiences in Higher Education

Abstract

Objectives or purposes:
My post-secondary journey as a first-generation woman student of color was tumultuous but I succeeded due to peer mentoring, student organizing, and my family’s community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005). What I wasn’t prepared for were the same challenges that I experienced as a first-generation undergraduate college student to extend through graduate school and into the professoriate. Through autoethnographic method I explore my journey while on the academic job market, in particular I pay close attention to the experiences of first-generation graduate school students and the hidden curriculum of the academic job search and selection process.
Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
This autoethnography is guided by womanist theory (Walker, 1983). Womanism can be defined as an epistemological perspective based on the collective experiences of Black women or other women of color. Womanists (especially womanist educators) often demonstrate the following three characteristics: an embrace of the maternal, an ethic of risk, and political clarity (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2002).
Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
Similar to ethnography and its focus on the study of experience, an autoethnography refers to research and writing about personal lived experiences through cultural analysis and personal narrative (Boylorn, & Orbe, 2016). I offer a brief autoethnographic narrative that captures multiple stages of my job search process and how I locate myself in the first-generation women of color faculty community.
Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
I utilize personal archival documents such as journal entries, email communication, voicemails, and text messages as sources of data for an autoethnographic account of my journey as a first-generation graduate student and early career woman of color higher education professional.
Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
I pay close attention to the experiences of first-generation graduate school students and the hidden curriculum of the academic job market. I share how my family and other first-generation academics of color assisted me with the job process and then later as I re-located for a second position as pre-tenure faculty.
Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
The scholarship on the academic job market is often written from the perspective of those who are doing the hiring. Some scholars and practitioners have offered advice on how applicants and candidates can best approach the job search process (Vaillancourt, 2013; Vick, Furlong, & Lurie, 2016), however this discourse is often silent on how it can be experienced differently if you identify as a woman of color. The professoriate is dominated by White faculty, in fact 76% of all full-time faculty, at degree-granting postsecondary institutions, including tenure-track and non-tenure track, identify as White (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017). Much has been written on how academic hiring committees can recruit and retain diverse faculty members (Gasman, 2016; Smith, Turner, Osei-Kofi, & Richards, 2004), yet there is little to no scholarship that explores the job search process from a first-generation woman of faculty of color’s perspective.

Author

• Dimpal Jain, California State University - Northridge