First Generation Student Entrepreneurship

The ECenter is committed to a special focus on first generation (FirstGen) student entrepreneurs - a currently under-served student population with a passion for ideas and innovation. 


 

For the past two years, we hosted a FirstGen pre-conference event before the start of the annual Deshpande Symposium at UMass Lowell. The Deshpande Symposium is a gathering of like-minded practitioners with a focus on accelerating innovation and entrepreneurship across the university and college environment. The pre-conferences were open to all universities who share an interest in and passion for the engagement of first-generation college students in entrepreneurial activities.  

The U.S. Department of Education reports nearly a third of undergraduate students are FirstGen. FirstGen is generally defined as the first person in a family to graduate with a four-year bachelor degree but even that definition is not universally agreed-upon. These students often enter college at a significant disadvantage and research shows that meaningful learning and engagement in high-impact experiences like entrepreneurship deliver positive, lasting effects for life. The event, which was supported by UNH’s I-Corps grant on inclusive entrepreneurship and in collaboration with UMass Lowell, was designed to spark a community of practice around this important issue. 

The focus of the pre-conference was on the sharing of best practices, idea generation, recent studies, and data collection surrounding FirstGen issues and how engagement in entrepreneurship can help impact success. The Deshpande Symposium attracts hundreds of attendees from institutions across the country, and by hosting this event just prior to the Symposium, we were able to leverage a wider group of universities to address FirstGen challenges and disseminate information more efficiently.

The pre-conference agenda included a panel of FirstGen student entrepreneurs and a panel of University experts. While all the discussion and content was valuable, it was especially enlightening to hear from the panel of FirstGen entrepreneurs who could share real life insight into their successes, challenges, and needs, and talk about what engagement tactics work best for them.

We encourage you to share your own research on FirstGen entrepreneurship to enhance the dialogue. Please use this repository to share

This material and work was based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number 1548011. Thank you, NSF!

Exploring Entrepreneurial Engagement with FirstGen Students (ECenter's Workshop at Deshpande Symposium 2018)