Dr. Ryan Parsons
The Transition to College and the Pull of Home
This talk surveys our current understanding of college success, particularly issues around retention and major selection. Drawing on ethnographic work with a cohort of high school students in a high poverty Mississippi Delta community, many of whom are now attempting college, I suggest new ways to think about barriers to student success. In particular, I explore the need to shift from individual-level interventions to recognizing the place-based challenges that rural FGLI students confront.