By Miller Rogers-Tetrick
The University of Maryland celebrated a First-Generation Celebration Panel at the Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center on Wednesday. The event, hosted by the Alumni Association and the Student Alumni Leadership Council, offered a moderated conversation and networking on navigating college and the workforce for the UMD community.
Alumna and Alumni Association Board of Governors member Alethia Nancoo opened the event by asking students to reframe how they see themselves. Now a leader at Squire Patton Boggs, she said first-generation students are not underprepared; they are evidence of what is possible. Roughly one in five Terps are first-generation. She noted that more than 400,000 Maryland alumni worldwide were once first-generation students.
“When I look around this room … I see people who carry not just their dreams, but the hopes of families, communities, and generations before them,” she said. For her parents, as for many in the room, higher education was “the surest path to transformation.”
Being first-generation, Nancoo said, is not a problem to fix but an edge to claim. Every headache, every piece of work, every late night, every time there’s worry about money, is proof of persistence.
“It’s all about legacy … on this campus,” she told the audience. “That is your superpower.”
The panel later turned that message into three distinct stories.
Ume Habiba, a software engineer at Microsoft, traced her path back to a crowded house in Dundalk, Maryland, where her parents didn’t finish middle school. College, she said, was never optional for her and her siblings.
“They could take away a lot of things that I [was] in possession of, but the one thing they could never get away from me was my degree because I earned that degree,” she said.
Habiba’s years at Maryland were far from smooth. She started as a computer science major but eventually dropped out of the program. She talked about tailoring as a once-in-a-while strength that demonstrates the best version of oneself.
“People want folks that are good at communicating, that are good with collaborating with other people,” she said.
Now, she codes in sequined blazers and full makeup and has delivered a TED Talk on personal branding. She urged the audience not to shave off parts of their identities to fit someone else’s idea of professional.
Joe Levin-Manning, a Maryland graduate in the class of 2017, described a different type of uncertainty. College was always expected in his family, he said, but nobody could explain majors, internships or office hours. He bounced between paths before realizing that changing direction was not failure but part of figuring out who he wanted to be.
“Some parts of it are going to be wild, and that’s OK”, he said. He encourages students to take smart risks, study abroad if they can, and treat networking as “just making friends” instead of a stiff exchange of business cards.
Norka Padilla is an instructional specialist and Maryland alum. As the daughter of a Guatemalan father and Norwegian mother, she remembers classrooms that tried to erase parts of her identity. She recalled being placed in low-level classes based on her last name and having to deal with those consequences out of her control.
Padilla urged students to take difficult classes and insist on support that matches their ambition. “High expectations with high support bring success.”
The speakers emphasized that being a first-generation student is not only one of the most rewarding things students can experience, but it also signals that students are part of a greater story and are already shaping what comes next.
Featured image: A view of the exterior of the Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center, where The First-Generation Celebration Panel was held Wednesday. Photo by Miller Rogers-Tetrick.