Profiles in Mentoring: Leigh McCallen on First-Generation Student Success
Leigh McCallen, PhD., is the Deputy Executive Director of Research and Evaluation at the NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools. Dr. McCallen is an applied researcher whose work focuses on promoting equitable postsecondary access and success for young people in New York City. We recently had the honor of speaking with Dr. McCallen about her paper regarding the effects institutional agents have on first-generation student success, featured here in The Chronicle!
Chronicle (C): What initially inspired you to study the role of institutional agents in first-generation college student success, and did your own educational journey shape this research?
Leigh McCallen (LM): I was especially drawn to the experiences of first-generation college students navigating the complex terrain of public universities, where support systems are often uneven but can be deeply impactful when they work well. My research questions were shaped by years working with students in the City University of New York system, where I taught and collaborated closely with students who were often balancing full-time work, family responsibilities, and financial pressures alongside their coursework. I saw how faculty, staff, and peer mentors played a critical role in helping students persist not just by sharing information, but by building trust, validating students’ experiences and identities, and helping them feel they belonged.
Although I’m not a first-generation college student myself, I’ve always believed strongly in the social contract of public education, and have seen how the mission of higher education is being eroded by underfunding and a continued disconnect between institutional structures and students’ real lives. This research was a way to better understand how change can happen, starting with everyday relationships.
C: Given your findings, what changes do you believe are most urgently needed within public universities to better support first-generation students?
LM: Public universities have a real chance to rethink what it means to support students, especially those who are first-generation to college. Too often, institutions expect students to adapt to systems that weren’t built with their needs in mind. We have an opportunity right now to shift from reactive approaches to more intentional, equity-centered strategies that acknowledge students as whole people navigating not just academics, but complicated lives deeply shaped by racialized and classed systems within and outside higher education.
Transforming systems to better respond to students’ needs requires reinvesting in the people who do the types of relational labor that promote the success of first-generation students, but are often under-resourced or under-recognized for it. Some of the most urgently needed changes in this regard include: recognizing and rewarding mentorship and advocacy in tenure and promotion systems; expanding culturally responsive training to ensure faculty understand how students’ race, class, and first-generation status shape their sense of belonging and academic trajectories; lowering advisor and counselor caseloads; and funding programs that embed peer mentorship into the fabric of an institution. The success of students who are first-generation to college truly hinges on whether institutions are willing to transform how they invest in and structure students’ access to meaningful relationships.
C: Were there any stories or interviews from participants that especially moved you or changed your perspective during the research process?
LM: Yes! One student articulated their college experience as feeling like they were “breaking into a system not built for them”, a reminder that students absolutely know and feel when they don’t belong, even if they can’t name it directly—though they often can.
Another student described a faculty member who made invisible institutional norms explicit (like how to request an extension on an assignment), and who also regularly checked in about how the student was doing outside the classroom. That relationship shifted how the student saw herself in college, as this professor “made me feel like I wasn’t just surviving here…like I could actually belong.” These responses also underscore how institutional agents don’t always hold formal titles; often, it’s the small, consistent gestures of human care and connection that have the biggest impact.
