比您的父母做得更好：访问和学生的成功推动了UMSL的社会流动性
An UMSL education empowers graduates to achieve social mobility – intragenerational change bettering one’s socioeconomic status. (Illustration by Marty Baragiola)
Two years afterAaron Ezell他从普渡大学（Purdue University）退出音乐家巡回演出，他拥有足够的音乐业务。
他知道自己必须找到另一个方向，并向家人寻求灵感。大多数亲戚有工人阶级的工作，但后来有他的姨妈。她毕业于大学，成为一名校长，不仅舒适，而且能够在经济上帮助家人。
他说：“我认为她是我想成为的人。”“如果大学是她完成的方式，我需要走。”
他在密苏里大学入学。必威是大平台吗路易College of Business Administrationand joined Delta Sigma Phi business fraternity, making a connection that led to his first job at Edward Jones where he’s now a financial advisor – a long way from college dropout.
Ezell’s rise demonstrates the power of an UMSL education to empower intragenerational change by lifting one’s socioeconomic status.
“Social mobility is doing better than the generation before me, but it is also setting an example for the generation behind me,” Ezell says. “I’ve got plenty of folks that are watching me and seeing me do things that nobody in my family has done before: traveling internationally, spending what they might consider crazy amounts of money or making investments.”
商学院校友亚伦·埃泽尔（Aaron Ezell）现在是爱德华·琼斯（Edward Jones）的财务顾问。（摄影：八月詹妮丝）
越来越多的大学对于建立财务安全和财富是必要的。根据U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics有关教育成就的失业率和收入的数据，只有高中文凭和大学学位的人平均每年损失24,336美元。
但是，如果学生不毕业，最好是没有太多债务，而并非每个机构都有同样能力，那么上大学还不够。在九月，美国新闻与世界报告released its first-ever“Top Performers on Social Mobility”based on how well universities graduate Pell Grant recipients. UMSL ranked No. 96 nationally, second in Missouri and well ahead of many universities that score high on traditional rankings based on prestige factors such as admissions rates or endowment size.
The rankings giant isn’t the first to notice that exclusive universities don’t always do right by those from lower-income backgrounds. In 2014, Harvard’sOpportunity Insightsgroup rated how well institutions move students from the lowest fifth of the economic spectrum to the top fifth, finding that within universities mobility rates vary by access and not economic status.
UMSL succeeds in measures of social mobility partly because of who the university serves. The median family income at UMSL was $34,093 in 2017-18. But more than population, it’s because people at UMSL work hard and care deeply about creating an environment rich in access, student success and favorable outcomes.
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Like Ezell,拱门捍卫者lawyer鲁迪·安格洛（Rudy Angulo）took a break from school after a year and worked. When he decided to finish, he opted to save money by living at home and enrolled at UMSL.
他说：“如果圣路易斯没有四年制的大学，我认为我没有资源可以申请爱德华兹维尔的大学或回到米佐。”“这不会发生。我只能想到有多少人在这里拥有四年的大学，在如此伟大的领域里，这么多人可以接触到这么多的领域。”
安古洛亲眼目睹了教育的变革力量：他的父亲从墨西哥移民了，然后通过辛勤工作和硕士学位在安海斯 - 布希（Anheuser-Busch）上升。
“In the St. Louis area, there has been a concentration of systematic injustice,” Angulo says. “Having that level of education, being accessible by public transportation, being affordable and offering scholarships to people in the area is something that is beneficial to St. Louis.”
Alumnus Rudy Angulo is now a lawyer with ArchCity Defenders. (Photo by Javier Angulo)
社区的访问是UMSL管理员和教育工作者的想法。拿Bridge Program，，，，which provides free college preparation for high school students and their families in the greater St. Louis area and impacts more than 4,000 individuals annually.
The effect: 100 percent of Bridge attendees enroll in college.
“They are exposed to obstacles and challenges found on a college campus, so when they hit their senior years, they’re coming out with a definitive plan, and then we connect them with support at their colleges,” saysNatissia Small，，，，the assistant provost for access and academic support who overseesStudent Academic Support Services。“We’re allowing students in the St. Louis community to have a fair playing field when it comes to resources.”
支持即使是最有动力的学生也是关键。校友Nesmira Muratovic，TD Ameritrade的零售风险和监督监督经理，利用了Center for Teaching and Learning的同伴领导补充说明program for difficult classes and navigated decisions with the help of her academic advisor.
A Bosnian immigrant who came to the U.S. as a child with little, Muratovic says the thing that made her most successful was being open to opportunities. A connection from her sorority helped Muratovic land an internship and then a job at Scottrade.
“Whether it was for joining clubs or studying abroad, my goal was not, ‘I need to get a degree and to get out,’” Muratovic says. “It’s using resources and being flexible.”
Muratovic的经验突出了学生成功的副教务长贝丝·埃克尔坎普calls cultural capital – those competencies, skills and connections that can be acquired both in or out of the classroom through experiences such as research, internships and study abroad, student organizations, leadership development opportunities, health and wellness programming and more. She thinks holistically about how to retain students and ensure they graduate within a four-to-six-year period and looks for trends among student groups, colleges, Pell-eligible students and more.
“One of the biggest stressors for low-income students is finances,” Eckelkamp says, pointing out UMSL’s efforts to create funded programs such as the Senior Degree Completion Scholarship, for students who have exhausted all financial aid options, and the Finish Your Degree Scholarship, which assists students who encounter an unanticipated roadblock in their finances.
There’s also UMSL’s tuition costs and automatic merit scholarships for first-time freshmen and transfers as well as donor- and department- funded scholarships. The university provides flexible pathways to degrees, including online or evening courses, which allow students to work while in school.
Eckelkamp and others, such as CTL DirectorKeeta Holmes，正在考虑如何减少毕业的时间和成本，包括通过Curriculum Alignment Processthat is streamlining degrees and ensuring courses are consistently offered.
“The first things that you look at are financial stress and academic support, but then you have to look broadly beyond that to campus climate, sense of belonging – all those things that impact learning,” Eckelkamp says. “We try to support students’ physiological needs. In response to food insecurity among students, Student Affairs led the efforts to run a food pantry. We have great safety officers and a comfortable campus environment, but students are still probably not going to learn to their greatest potential if they don’t feel like they belong or are valued.”
女校友Nesmira Muratovic TD Ameritrade零售risk and supervision oversight manager. (Photo by August Jennewein)
One of the people working to close the opportunity gap for all at UMSL, especially first- generation, low-income or underrepresented minority students, is CTL Assistant Director Erin Whitteck. The CTL promotes student success through faculty development programs that encompass everything from designing courses to faculty learning communities.
惠特克的专业是包容性的教学实践。With no change to classroom rigor, instructors focus on ways to support students, which includes establishing and fostering a course climate that promotes belonging, setting student expectations, selecting course content that recognizes diversity and barriers to inclusion, designing courses for accessibility and reflecting on one’s own beliefs about teaching.
她说：“我们都听说一些艰难的教授可能会说‘看你的左边，向右看，你们当中只有一个在这堂课上成功。”“At UMSL, instead, we say, ‘We want all of you to be successful in the class, and these are the ways we have provided to you to be successful.’ Even signaling that you want students to be successful, that they belong in that class, is huge.”
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毕业生的平均起薪UMSL - 4美元7,000 – or the number employed full time or heading for more education – 93 percent – don’t tell the whole story of how the university fosters social mobility. There’s also the fact that more than 73 percent of UMSL graduates stay and work in the St. Louis region.
That makes a sizable network for connections, both among alumni and within the university. Take, for example, Ezell, who serves as an Alumni Association board member.
他说：“我们的人口众多，在圣路易斯的占地面积很大，并且以伟大的工人和人民而闻名。”“ UMSL让我为现实生活做好了准备。教育很棒，我能够为劳动力建立一些可转移的技能。我将永远感谢UMSL为我提供成功的一切。我试图向前付款。”
This story was originally published in the spring 2020 issue ofUMSLMagazine。If you have a story idea forUMSLMagazine, emailmagazine@umsl.edu。
Short URL:https://blogs.umsl.edu/news/?p=85133
