Meet First-Gen Faculty and Staff

Enjoy this throwback post from 2020! November 8, 2020 My father enlisted in the U.S. Navy when he graduated from high school. As a farming family, my maternal grandfather did not attend schooling past the sixth grade and did not value the importance of formalized schooling. My mom had always wanted to be a teacher […]

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Enjoy this throwback post from 2021! November 9, 2021 First generation college student. This term was very unknown to me until around my sophomore/junior year at Missouri State. I was so first gen that I didn’t even know what a first-gen college student was. College was always the dream, but it was uncertain. My parents […]

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My name is Dr. Keith McShan, and I am a proud first-generation student turned assistant professor here at Missouri State University (MSU). As a first-generation student, I had many accomplishments, such as being nominated for valedictorian for my undergraduate Kinesiology program, starting my own sports and marketing club, and being recognized as the Athletics and […]

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Enjoy this throwback post from 2020! November 9, 2020 My mother and her mother before her never had the chance to attend college. I got that chance and though it took a while for me to learn how to learn from my professors-eventually earned a master’s degree and now my daughter has a Ph.D.! Education […]

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Enjoy this throwback post from 2021! November 9, 2021 I am a first-generation college student. My parents never went to college and had no idea how to help me navigate going to college however, the expectation was that I would go to college. And if I went, I needed to do so on my own […]

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For first-generation college students, new and unexpected challenges come almost every day. When I faced adversity as a first-generation student, I got frustrated and was incredibly hard on myself. Then, I heard one of my favorite quotes that I now apply to most areas of life. It is from American poet Maya Angelou, “Do the […]

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How did your college experience impact your career choices and opportunities? My name is Brad Bodenhausen and I’m the Vice President for Community and Global Partnerships here at Missouri State.  If you told me 40 years ago (when I was starting high school) what I would be doing today – I would have been surprised […]

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Can you share your background as a first-generation college student? What motivated you to pursue higher education? My dad always wanted his kids to go to college as it wasn’t something available to him. He was from a farming family, drafted into the Vietnam War, and a blue-collar worker for many years after. While he […]

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I am the first person in my family who has not only earned a bachelor’s degree, but also a master’s degree. My childhood dream was to ‘make it big’ in life and because of that, my mother encouraged me to pursue a four-year degree. Because I was the first person in my family to earn […]

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I always knew I wanted to attend college. Whether or not I was going, was never a question, but that doesn’t mean it was an easy road. My mother was very supportive of a college education. My father wasn’t unsupportive, but really didn’t see the value in it. He was a self-made executive who focused […]

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