Episode 123: Carrie West, Jeff Doyle, and Elliot Felix on Building First Gen Belonging
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How can higher education institutions foster a deeper sense of belonging for first-generation students through connected programs, services, and physical spaces? What national trends and campus-level strategies best empower first-gen success? We talk through these with Carrie West, Director of Campus Planning, Design, and Construction at UT Austin, and Jeff Doyle, former leader at UT Austin and current Vice President at Marymount University. Together, we explore how holistic approaches, cross-departmental collaboration, peer coaching networks, and strategic facility design can break down administrative silos and improve first generation student recruitment and retention. [Recorded live at the NASPA Student Success in Higher Education Conference in June 2026] Download presentation here.
How to Build First-Generation Student Belonging: A Holistic Approach for Higher Education
Fostering first-generation student belonging has become one of the most vital imperatives in modern higher education. When first-gen students feel connected, valued, and supported on campus, the impact is profound. Research demonstrates a direct link between a student’s sense of belonging and their likelihood to persist, thrive, and graduate. However, achieving true belonging requires moving beyond isolated initiatives. Institutions must take a holistic approach that bridges academic support, student programming, and physical campus environments.
In a recent episode of The Connected College Podcast, host Elliot Felix sat down with higher education leaders Jeff Doyle and Carrie West to explore national data and actionable strategies implemented at the University of Texas at Austin. Together, they outlined how higher ed institutions can break down organizational silos to empower first-gen students from orientation through graduation.
Understanding the National Landscape of First-Gen Belonging
To drive higher education student success, leaders must first examine national trends and metrics. Broad dataset studies, such as the National College Health Assessment, reveal that roughly 70% of undergraduate students report feeling a true sense of belonging at their university. Furthermore, studies by researchers Brady and Gopalan highlight that for every one-point increase on a five-point belonging scale, a student's likelihood of graduating increases by 3.5 percentage points.
Despite these positive correlations, significant gaps remain—particularly for first-generation students. Data from NASPA and the Center for First-Gen Student Success shows that first-gen students often utilize campus resources at lower rates than their continuing-generation peers. For example, first-gen students access health services 50% less, academic advising 33% less, and tutoring or writing centers 25% less.
This gap often stems from a lack of social capital or navigating the "hidden curriculum" of higher ed. Bridging this divide requires proactive communication, peer mentorship, and intentional outreach to ensure students know these services exist specifically to serve them.
Designing Programs and Services That Build Capital and Community
At UT Austin, supporting over 11,000 first-generation undergraduates demands tailored programming that builds social capital while fostering genuine peer connections. As Jeff Doyle explained, effective student support isn't just about adding more staff; it's about leveraging peer networks, specialized workshops, and targeted outreach.
Key strategies for impactful first-gen support include:
Peer Coaching and Mentorship: Hiring and training peer success coaches allows students to learn directly from those who have navigated the same challenges. Regular touchpoints ensure ongoing accountability and support.
Empowering Families: Extending workshops and webinars to parents of first-gen students equips families with the knowledge to encourage their students during tough moments, reinforcing resilience from home.
Targeted Skill Workshops: Offering practical sessions on personal finance, early career exploration, and study abroad opportunities demystifies complex campus systems and expands career horizons.
Community Building and Celebrations: Hosting social events, Living-Learning Communities (LLCs), campus-wide traditions, and dedicated first-gen graduation ceremonies fosters a sense of pride and shared identity.
Aligning Campus Space and Support Services for Seamless Success
While robust programs are essential, the physical campus environment plays an equally crucial role in student retention. When campus space and support services are thoughtfully integrated, institutions remove physical barriers to access and foster organic interactions.
Carrie West highlighted how UT Austin strategically places key student resources directly along high-traffic student pathways:
Co-Locating Services Where Students Live: Placing academic support hubs, like the Sanger Learning Center, directly inside large residential communities (such as Jester Center) makes tutoring, advising, and mentorship convenient and visible.
Demystifying Administrative Hubs: Creating centralized spaces like "Texas One Stop" in iconic campus buildings brings registrar, financial aid, and student accounts services into a single, welcoming front door.
Embedded Academic Support Centers: Establishing specialized student success hubs directly within academic colleges—such as Engineering and Business—delivers tailored advising and cohort-based leadership development right where classes occur.
Leveraging Outdoor "Middle Spaces": Enhancing pedestrian corridors with shade, seating, food trucks, and vibrant landscaping turns ordinary transit routes into community-building spaces where informal peer connections flourish.
Summary: Building Connected Colleges for Every Student
Creating an environment where first-generation students thrive requires aligning data-driven insights, proactive programming, and intentional facility design. When higher education leaders evaluate both the national landscape and local campus realities, they can break down administrative silos and deliver holistic support. By unifying spaces, services, and community programs, institutions transform student success from an abstract goal into a daily, lived reality for every first-generation Longhorn and college student nationwide.
Episode 123 Transcript
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Elliot Felix: I'm excited to share this bonus episode of The Connected College Podcast with you. In June, I had the good fortune to present at NASPA's Student Success Conference with Carrie West from UT Austin and Jeff Doyle then at UT Austin and now at Marymount University. Our session was about going broad and deep to understand and improve belonging among first gen students with a holistic approach considering support services, programming, and spaces. In the first part, I go broad talking about national data on belonging, then in the second part, Jeff talks about first gen support services and programs at UT, and then in the third Carrie talks about the spaces. We had three really lively discussions, but the audio wasn't great so I cut out the Q&A. I'll post a link to our slides in the show notes if you want to dig deeper. Welcome to the Connected College podcast. I'm your host, Elliot Felix. I've helped more than a hundred colleges and universities change what they offer, how they operate, and the way they're organized to enable student success. Join me for insightful interviews with higher ed innovators, sharing the stories, stats, and strategies to create better connected colleges and universities.
Elliot Felix: Welcome everyone to Building First Gen Student Belonging: National and Local Perspectives on the Role of Programs, Services, and Spaces. I'm Elliot Felix. I lead the Higher Ed Advisory practice at Bureau Happold. I'm also the author of a book called The Connected College, which is an encouraging evidence-based playbook for breaking down silos for student success.
Carrie West: Good morning, everyone. I'm Carrie West. I'm with the University of Texas here at Austin. Welcome to our wonderful city. I oversee campus planning, design, and construction. I started here at UT in August, so I'm still pretty new. Prior to that, I have spent all of my career in higher education. I was at Northwestern University most recently where I worked with many of your colleagues, Jeremy and Carlos and others on a daily basis, and I was there for about twelve years. And then I was at Arizona State University and University of Illinois. I too am a first gen. I went from graduating with a class of thirty-six students into a lecture hall at the University of Illinois of a thousand students. Incredibly overwhelming, and this was back in—I'm not even gonna say how long ago it was—but navigating was challenging.
Jeff Doyle: Thanks, Carrie. Jeff Doyle here. I grew up in Maryland. Father was professor at HBCU for thirty years. Went to Virginia with Elliot, although we did not know each other. Worked at universities in Virginia, then North Carolina at Appalachian State, Baylor for twelve years as dean of students, and then Southwestern, where one of my attendees is from there too, and UT this past year.
Elliot Felix: Great. And I think just to give you all the lay of the land here, our goal is to go broad and deep on first-gen belonging. And so I'm the broad part. I'm gonna talk a little bit about what we see. I've had the pleasure of working with 120 colleges and universities, helping more than a million students. So I'm gonna go broad and lay out the national perspective, and Jeff and Carrie are gonna go deep on UT Austin. And hopefully you'll find that to be a really valuable conversation because you'll get the big picture, you'll get the details, you'll get the theory, the data, and you'll also see it in action. And so those are gonna be our three acts of the session.
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Elliot Felix: And so as we think about belonging, I think it's great to have a shared definition. And one of the great books on this is Strayhorn's College Student Sense of Belonging, and he talks about belonging as your perceived sense of support, where you're feeling connected, you're feeling like you matter, like you're cared for, like you're accepted, like you're respected, like you're a member of the community.
Elliot Felix: The other thing we know about belonging, there are a lot of different measures of it. One of the ones that I like is the National College Health Assessment. It's a pretty large dataset, and it's a very direct question. They say "I feel that I belong at my university," agree, disagree, kind of thing. The good news is we're almost back to pre-pandemic levels, about 70, 70 and a half percent give or take, of students are agreeing with that. The other thing we know is that when students feel that sense of belonging, they're more likely to persist and to graduate. Brady and Gopalan did this great study where for every one point on a five-point Likert scale increase in belonging, there's three and a half percentage points more likely to graduate.
Elliot Felix: And NSSE did a special question, or I should say set of questions, in 2020 on belonging, and they found that students who felt like they belonged were 41% more likely to continue first to second year in terms of retention. We also know that first-gen students may feel and experience belonging differently than continuing gen students. Brady and Gopalan also found higher first-gen belonging in two-year institutions and lower in four-year institutions. That NSSE 2020 survey found that when they asked students about belonging, it was highly correlated with their quality of interaction score, and they talked about belonging in three components: "I feel comfortable being myself," "I feel valued at this institution," and "I feel like part of the community."
Elliot Felix: They also found high correlations with the supportive environment questions. So if students feel like they belong, they're also likely to feel like their environment is supportive. NASPA and the Center for First-Gen Student Success also found that first-gen students are using services less, which is unfortunate. And just some of these to point out: they're using health services about 50% less than continuing generation, they're using advising about a third less, and they're using academic support tutoring and writing about a quarter less than continuing generation students. So there's a gap there that we have to close.
Elliot Felix: There are some other interesting gaps that we've found at Bureau Happold in our own national student experience surveys. First gen students are actually more happy with library spaces and less happy than continuing generation with library services, which points to that kind of disconnect. Maybe there isn't the awareness. Maybe there's some hidden curriculum there if you're calling it reference support versus say, research support. And so there are some gaps we have to close there as well, and between spaces and services in general. Sometimes if you think about the services and the programs that are offered in a space, sometimes students are actually more happy with the services and the programs than they are the space itself. That's the case for student health and dining. Sometimes they're pretty much equivalent, like in res halls. But then sometimes the services and the programming kind of lag behind the space, and that's the case for technology spaces like computer labs, classrooms, academic support like writing, tutoring, libraries, and research. So there's some gaps we can close there. I know that was a lot of data because we're talking about how we define belonging, how we measure belonging, how it's correlated with support and interactions and services, and how there might be differences or similarities between continuing generation students. But hopefully that gives you the lay of the land.
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Jeff Doyle: I'm gonna talk a little bit about First-Gen Longhorns, of which I've overseen that unit, but there's some incredible staff that do great things there that I'll be sharing a little bit about what they do too. So University of Texas, it's about 55,000 students. I think 40 something thousand of them are undergraduates, and about 11,000 of them are first-gen students. So very large population what we do there, and one of the things I often think about with UT is we're a very selective institution, which means we get the benefits of having some data because we can screen on the front end. So in some ways, some of the schools like Grand Valley State or Texas State probably do as much or more for students than we do at times, but we do think very carefully about how we help our students. So we have peer success coaches. If you look at influencing students and how to have the most impact, having more and more staff isn't always the best thing. Sometimes they learn more from their peers, and so we hire a number of coaches to come in. They go through selection. They get training. They meet regularly with staff that oversee them. We have three staff in our first-gen area. They each have about 10 mentees that they meet with every couple weeks. They log that in a place where we hold data on those interactions and how they are going. We have workshops for them, and social events for them to connect at. And then we created a Canvas course where they can go to get information on what's happening on campus relevant to them from a first-gen standpoint.
Jeff Doyle: And getting people to events, it's easy when the coaches are meeting with them in small groups and saying, "Oh, let's all come to this event," right? In terms of workshops that we found that have been helpful, you can see several of them here. Personal finances. What we're talking about with first-gen is they don't have what we call the social capital to know how to effectively navigate college. We did a workshop at one school I was at. We did it for the parents of first-gen students. So every week on a Tuesday night, we would meet from 7:00 to 8:00 with any parent of a first-gen student. We did a webinar series. But our goal there was to equip the parents with the capital that the parents of other students that weren't first-gen were getting, so that when they called home and said, "I don't think I can make it here," unfortunately, sometimes parents will be like, "Okay, I didn't make it either. I understand. Come on home if you need to come home." We want them to be able to say, "No, you can do this, and here's how I can help you." So finance is an example of, we all pretend like we have... We're okay, I think behind the scenes we're all thinking, each of us individually, about how am I gonna handle my finances? And so first-gen students are not alone in that, and we can help them think through how they can effectively do that also. Career connections. They might not envision the careers that they could potentially be in, so doing early career exploration, giving them inventories where they could learn about potential careers, getting them out to meet with their faculty and advisors, and talking about what could bring them greater success.
Jeff Doyle: A high impact practice is study abroad. Very few first-gen students do that, so we did a program called First Abroad where we try and get them to go to another country. We actually gave scholarships out for students that wanted to go study abroad, so they could get additional money to do a study abroad experience. Success strategies, a mindfulness summit, final study session. So these are some activities that we found resonated. We have QR codes they scan when they come in, so we can look at the data on who's showing up, who's not showing up, and figure out who we need to reach and could get benefit from future sessions.
Jeff Doyle: We also asked them, "What would you like more of?" And they said, "We'd like more social events," "we'd like more connection." And so obviously from a belonging standpoint, that can help. And so we did a game night. Different times of the year, there's different things that fit. If you haven't been to Austin before, there's a bridge here over the Colorado River that there's like 10,000 bats that come out at dark every evening. So if you wanna go check that out, it's kinda fun. But we rented a boat and took the students out and showed them that. And they really enjoy these activities.
Jeff Doyle: If you're like, "Oh, I like these flyers that you have," we also have a marketing staff that did our brochures for us. They're like, "When do you wanna put it on Instagram?" There's a very thorough messaging approach, where we have videos and other things that we did. So thinking through how you're marketing this to reach them is another key attribute. I was at one school and had 60 full-time staff and I was like, "What position are we lacking?" And they're like, "We can't reach the students." And so we took funds from several departments and created what we called a student outreach coordinator. It's basically a marketing person. And their job was to figure out how to reach these students. And one of the things we did was we created an incoming student Facebook group, 'cause those exist and everyone's talking on them. But we monitored it and we started inserting information that would be helpful to students, particularly first-gen students to be successful. We hired students to communicate about our Instagram and other things. So thinking through how you're reaching these students.
Jeff Doyle: Other first-gen initiatives: we have a living-learning center and Carrie will talk a little bit about that too, but students can apply, live together. This is one where some first-gen students are like, "No, I don't wanna-- I don't want people to know I'm first-gen." Okay, that's one group. And another group of students are like, "I'm very proud that I'm first-gen." And we're gonna advocate and support the latter group. The other group can find their other ways of connecting, which is fine. So they have similar to the other program where they have mentors that meet with them regularly. And that group serves less than 100 right now, but then we have this Coach Connections program. So for the other 10,000 students that want to just meet with someone, we have some first-gen student leaders that will meet with them and talk about how things are going.
Jeff Doyle: We also have emergency funds and laptop checkout. When I first got there, I was like, "This seems old school," but we had six or seven laptops, and they're almost all checked out. And I was like, "Wow." This is serving a need I didn't real-- I thought everyone had laptops, and they do, but when they don't have one, they don't know what to do. And so it's turned out to be really helpful. Scholarships, first-gen fundraising. So the university sponsors Hornraiser campaigns periodically where you can put in some information. So we raise funds for stoles, graduation stoles that they could get, which a lot of people wanted to give to. But we try and pick something each year we wanna fundraise for.
Jeff Doyle: Campus-wide events. If you've ever heard of Fish Camp at A&M, Line Camp at UT, that's a big extended orientation program that I've discovered more in the South than in the North. But we have a first-gen camp, so faculty and staff come in, and we have a pool party. And so we do a lot of fun things with the students that come in early and get them excited about UT. And then when you're at larger schools, we have 11 different undergraduate programs, majors. They all are like, "We wanna do our own first-gen thing," which is great. "How do we support you? How can we get more people plugged in?" So that's exciting.
Jeff Doyle: And then the tower is a big thing at UT, so a big celebration where we have live music and tattoos and free food and have speakers come out there. We did a workshop on imposter syndrome, "do I belong here?" And then we celebrate faculty and staff who are first-gen and get them to identify with the program. So those are some other events. And then the last thing, we do a graduation. So because it's so big at UT, we have a multi-hour rolling graduation ceremony where you can come in and we have a red carpet, and retired faculty, staff, first-gen faculty, staff help out with that. And all these students receive this stole here, which we fundraise for. They love coming in to get those. They're so proud of them. So that's been a really nice way for them to find identity in their status.
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Carrie West: Great. Thank you. We've talked a lot about the programs, the data around our first generation, and how those contribute to belonging. And what I'm gonna talk about is how does our campus environment contribute and partner with everyone as we think about belonging across campus? So UT Austin, as you all know, is quite large. So we say we have the forty acres, where that's our original forty acres, now we have about four hundred acres and a lot of different activities occurring. And just like all of your campuses, in many ways, we're a city. So when we start to think about the first generation coming to experience our campus environment, we have to be mindful of how our physical environment is creating opportunities. We have a lot of activities, we have a lot of resources, but it can also create barriers. It's hard to find services. So when we think about belonging across campus, we have to be incredibly intentional about the placement of those activities and be really mindful about how we design twenty-four million square feet and make these services and activities available to them, and also communicating to all that we want the students to come and engage in these spaces. We have to be incredibly intentional with that.
Carrie West: So with that, one of the things that Jeff had mentioned is a living learning community. So on our southeast edge of campus is where one of our large student residence hall districts is, and we're thinking about this in many layers. So right now in that district alone, we have about forty-two hundred beds. It is very dense. In parallel to that, and as we start to think about that intentionality, we also have that located near several services. So we have our libraries across from that. Gregory Gym is located there with our student recreation. We've got a teaching center adjacent to that. So we're really thinking intentionally about where we're designing and putting activities on campus. And even within that district alone, we have Jester. So Jester is, as I understand—Jeff highlighted to me—about one of the largest student halls in the United States with about twenty-two, twenty-three hundred beds associated with that.
Carrie West: And within that, we have our living learning community. So our living learning community is located on the fourteenth floor of one of those towers. We have the first-gen experience there. So in many ways, what's wonderful about this is they are not only part of the big community that offers all those services and activities, connectivity to other undergraduate students, and first-year and second-year students in many ways. We have other services associated with that. But then on that floor, we have 70 to 90 students given each year. Of course, these are singles and doubles, so it'll vary. We have a smaller community where the first-gen students can come together. And when I always say things, it's like our physical environment's great, how are we programming that? So in that space alone, there's a lot of program activities that are occurring. We have mentors coming to speak with them, faculty coming to speak with them. They have a monthly meeting that occurs. They have events that occur where we take the students out and do some of the fun, exciting things that Jeff was talking about. So we're creating that small community within the greater whole, so students can experience all of that.
Carrie West: So part of that is as we start to look at and think about the services in Jester and the access to that, and Elliot highlighted some key statistics of making these spaces, such as the Sanger Learning Center, available to the students where they live. We're meeting them right in their places where they live, they learn, they explore, they do other things. Now, this center provides services to first-gen students as well as others on campus. So advising services occur here. There's study workshops. There's additional mentorship programs that occur out of this location. But having this right there in their student community allows that immediate access to them. It's a very visible space, near a dining hall too. We've got all kinds of things where things aren't intentionally where you have to go look for them. They're finding them in their communities.
Carrie West: Another space, and somebody mentioned it earlier, the access to information. So we created, right in the heart of campus, in our main iconic tower, the Texas One Stop. So this space starts to demystify the mystery of where all these activities occur on campus. We created a one-stop shop for information the students may need access to. So the registrar office, financial services, dean of students, others all have access here. The students can come to the space. They're welcome into the space. It's on the first floor of that tower where they can come in, get a service, ask a question, and then the experts and staff sitting there can really help direct them to where they need to be on campus. This is really that thread that ties all of the different services on campus together.
Carrie West: We also have the UT Student Service space in the Dean of Students Office. So we talked about a lot of the programs that were being offered to our students. We wanna make sure as we think about how those are presented to the students, but also when students have questions where they come to. We wanted to create a very inviting space where students can see themselves in the space, they can come to the space, they can engage with the offices, and that they're easily accessible. And then nothing happens alone. We are a very large institution, so all services cannot be centralized. So we've got several across campus. I'm gonna highlight a couple of them where we actually are meeting the students where they are in all the different schools or different zones of campus.
Carrie West: So in this instance, we have the Engineering Student Success Center. Our engineering building is like the unions of engineering spaces, where all of our students come together into this large open atrium space, and surrounding it is all the spaces that are very student-focused: classrooms, design studios. But in parallel to that, it was really important that we create—and off of this in some of the offices you see right off that main corridor—is our Engineering Student Success Center. So students can come to this location, and our first gens can come to this location and learn more about engineering and the activities that are occurring in that school, get advising on how to access the different programs, the classes, the coursework, mentorship programs, really helping them succeed and meeting them where they are in that space.
Carrie West: And then another one is our McCombs School of Business Success Scholars Champions and Sustainers. So this is actually under construction right now, and will open in 2028. The services are currently being offered, and they're moving into a new building. But equally as important, when we talked about the engineering students, this program's a little bit different, as it's intentionally designed for both first generation and other students with affinity associations coming to the institution, and it's creating a cohort of students that can go through these leadership programs, mentorship programs at the institution. So they're really setting themselves up for success in our undergraduate business school.
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Carrie West: And then finally, we talked a lot about just placemaking on campus. So one important thing as we've looked at UT, recognizing that it's so large, is being incredibly intentional and really leveraging our exterior environment to be that thread that connects our student journey. So while we always talk a lot about buildings, in this instance, we're talking about all the middle spaces because those middle spaces, especially in Texas where we have wonderful weather most of the year—keep in mind it's 90 and 95 humidity outside today, but students are gone right now. So most of the year it's the shoulder seasons, and it's beautiful, and we really have an opportunity to leverage that exterior environment and be intentional about the programs we create because that's where community is really driven, when they're walking between classes, and we think about their journeys, when they're getting food.
Carrie West: Things that we're doing in yellow here, this is like our major highway through campus, if you will. So Jester is down here, so that's the student residence hall we talked about with a huge component of students. We have the libraries, Gregory Auditorium with our student recreation, and then we have what I call our second union, if you will. It's our student activity center. And then sprinkled all along are tons of undergraduate classroom spaces. And we start to see what we're doing is really sprinkling in a lot of experiences along there. So the oak trees, which are part of our legacy on campus, are contributing and providing shade for the students to come. We have food trucks, tons of food trucks that come in and sprinkle in there for the students to get food between classes. We've introduced all of the benches, the picnic tables, so we've really worked to leverage and tie that whole experience through, and then also be incredibly purposeful as we renovate spaces and tie spaces together of making sure that we're putting those very accessible functions immediately adjacent inside the buildings and making sure there's transparency there.
Carrie West: So that goes into where the design comes in, and really looking at those, putting those hard-to-find services in key locations on campus. We recognize, and I'm focusing more on the opportunities, if you will, 'cause there's always a lot of barriers. But thinking about consistent identity, making sure those spaces are designed comfortably and that the students can see themselves in those spaces. It's not just about, as you all know, the furniture that we put into the space. It's about how can they see themselves in there. So everything from the artwork we place, what we call the functions, how we communicate access, and making sure those spaces are available at key times. Oftentimes trying to meet the students where they are and keeping them available for multiple hours throughout the day and on the weekends where possible. Those are all the kind of things we're thinking about as we design our spaces going forward.
Elliot Felix: Thanks for listening to the Connected College podcast. Go to elliotfelix.com for more information about my book, the Connected College, articles I've written, and talks I've given. There's also tools you can download, information on upcoming events, and information on booking me to speak at your institution or organization. Please support the podcast by rating it and reviewing it wherever you're listening. Let's create connected colleges where all students succeed.