Undocumented and Refugee Student Success Summit 2025

This summit intends to bring together students, faculty/staff, and other stakeholders to dialogue, learn, connect, and develop goals and intentional strategies that promote the inclusion, experience, and success of students from undocumented and refugee backgrounds in post-secondary education in the United States.

About the Summit:
The First-Gen+ Center supports students who are from historically underrepresented backgrounds in higher education, and their allies, while specifically centering our work in promoting the success and well-being of college students who identify as first-generation, who identify as undocumented, have refugee status, and those who have families with limited income. More specifically, we strive to address barriers and challenges negatively impacting these student communities by creating attainment disparities and inequities of opportunities as they navigate their journeys through complex education systems. Subsequently, the purpose of this gathering is to help each participant with deepening their work, elevate our respective efforts, and institutionalize initiatives from holistic and comprehensive lenses such as student development and intersectionality, best practices and positionality, and student-center and evidence-driven solutions to implement sustainable and inclusive changes. 

Through this summit we will address issues concerning social justice, equality, humanitarian and immigration landscape, and attainment disparities in student success. Participants will engage in thought-provoking conversations based on positionality to expand our knowledge, be able to ask questions to develop a more comprehensive understanding of this topic, and conclude our time by developing tangible and measurable goals that are relevant to our respective roles as we continue to promote safe, inclusive, and supportive learning opportunities to undocumented and refugee students – a true commitment to inclusive excellence.  

Summit Learning Outcomes: 

As a result of attending the undocumented and refugee student success summit participants will: 

1. Increase their current knowledge and understanding of undocumented and refugee student experiences and the policies that impact citizenship in the US. 
2. Gain greater self-awareness through assessing their current roles (positionality) and privileged identities (ex: holding citizenship in the US) to identify opportunities to support undocumented, refugee, and immigrant-origin students 
3. Apply what is learned in sessions, including the creation of one short-term goal or action to contribute to the academic success and well-being of undocumented, refugee, and immigrant-origin students. 
4. Student participants will feel greater identity affirmation and an increased sense of belonging.