Madi Austin grew up in the small town of Ishpeming (population about 6,000) near Lake Superior and attended school in the even smaller town of Negaunee. “It has a lot of charm and it’s a really tight-knit community,” the LSA senior says. “But I knew in high school that it was time for something new.”
Austin’s tattoos narrate the story of her life: the birth dates of her parents, sister, and herself; the area codes for Michigan's Upper Peninsula and for Ann Arbor; a book and an envelope, symbolizing her love of reading and writing; and one on her upper left arm that might be the most meaningful of all—a butterfly.
Students at her high school who were interested in college often attended nearby Northern Michigan University in Marquette. She had thought about U-M but wasn’t sure she’d get in because her school lacked AP classes and dual-enrollment options that she knew many other students in Michigan had access to.
“I was definitely an outlier for thinking about Michigan. There’s a mystification of U-M where I’m from, that it’s for people downstate and rich people,” she says. “I really didn’t consider it until I was going through the application process and I decided, I can do this. It felt almost like an act of rebellion.”
The idea grew even more appealing when she attended a virtual information session and learned that U-M had a large population of first-generation college students—that is, students whose parents did not graduate from a college or university. She applied and was admitted, leading her family—big U-M sports fans—to throw a maize and blue-themed party. Austin first visited on Campus Day during the spring of her senior year, then began her first year with the Summer Bridge Scholars Program, where she earned six course credits and learned to navigate campus before the crush of the fall semester.
Austin is now an ambassador for Intend to Attend (I2A) at LSA—a program that encourages high school students to explore all of their secondary education options, not just U-M, and that helps prepare them for the next phase of their lives. Through I2A and her own outreach, she has successfully recruited several students from her high school to attend U-M by assuring them that they could thrive, as she has.
—LSA senior Madi Austin
She is also a U.P. Scholar, part of a robust program that provides scholarships and a community of support for students from the Upper Peninsula. The support includes individualized, one-on-one coaching with professional staff; leadership development opportunities; opportunities to connect with others from the U.P. and build a community; and more. Austin serves as a liaison between the U.P. Scholars Program and I2A, and she is working to ensure that more outreach is done at U.P. schools beyond the ones in the bigger cities.
Now, as an international studies major and writing minor, she is applying to M.F.A. programs in California to study creative writing. The tattoo on her left arm represents her journey from the Upper Peninsula to LSA, to wherever her drive and creativity will lead her.
“I felt like I was still the caterpillar when I was living up there,” she says. “I came here and thought, I can finally be the butterfly.”
In I2A, student ambassadors like Austin visit schools around the state to encourage students in grades 8-12 to consider community college, four-year college and university, and vocational school options. Many of the students in the program are first-generation, but it’s open to any student in Michigan who would like support exploring their options after high school.
“We’ve had a lot of success with I2A, more and more each year,” says I2A project manager Alexa Lynch. One element of I2A is GROE—which stands for Go for Readiness, Opportunity, and Empowerment—in which students visit U-M from around the state to experience life on campus and to learn about their post-secondary education options. Of those students, the success rates are extremely high; for instance, 100 percent of the high school seniors from 2024’s GROE with I2A (20 out of 20) submitted at least one college application. Many GROE with I2A participants have gone on to be ambassadors for I2A.
The ambassadors connect with students statewide, with a particular emphasis on their hometowns and home counties when possible. “The ambassadors can answer all of the questions with their firsthand knowledge. How do I navigate being homesick? What if I haven’t had any opportunities to take AP classes? How do I pay for college? The I2A ambassadors know all about that, and they have a built-in trust with the younger students that staff wouldn’t have,” Lynch says. “When they go to their hometowns, many of the younger students know them or know of them.”
It’s no accident that students like Austin are succeeding at LSA. Indeed, several programs and systems are in place at LSA for first-generation students even before they step foot on campus. Notably, the Kessler Scholars Program began at U-M and has served as a model for an expanded Kessler program across the country.
The efforts are paying off. Overall, U-M maintains a high retention rate (greater than 97 percent) and graduation rate (greater than 90 percent) for first-gen/Pell-eligible students compared to other institutions. And the majority—about 62 percent—of undergraduate first-gen students at U-M are LSA students.
LSA has become well known around the country for its support of first-gen students in the Kessler Scholars Program, which is now part of the national Kessler Scholars Collaborative. The program provides scholarships to high-achieving students who are among the first in their family to attend college.
Founded at U-M and funded by the Judy and Fred Wilpon Family Foundation, the Kessler Scholars Program became a model for providing wrap-around support to students that goes far beyond scholarship funding to include one-on-one coaching, peer mentoring, shared community service, and more.
Students with nontraditional backgrounds may also take advantage of the First-Generation Commitment, a newly created initiative designed to provide asset-based support for first-generation and limited-income students at LSA to ensure their successful transition into U-M’s academic and social communities.
And the SOUL program in the Department of Sociology is the first department-level leadership program for first-generation college students at U-M. “Part of our work is to get first-gen students to dream,” says Matthew Sullivan, cofounder of SOUL and now the director of the Kessler Scholars Program at U-M. “Part of our work is to get them to feel comfortable having higher expectations, and having higher aspirations, not just being in the survival mode, but what I call the flourishing mode.”
LSA Dean Rosario Ceballo was a first-gen college student herself, and she has made it a key priority for the college to expand its support and resources for students who are the first in their families to attend a four-year college. Her goals include prioritizing programming that connects first-gen students to faculty and staff mentors and provides funding for summer internships.
In 2023, Tyáe Grant stood at the microphone during a university summit at Palmer Commons to perform her poem “Check On Your Wildflowers.” She referred to herself and her peers of similar backgrounds as wildflowers—“those born into environments that were not fully equipped with what they needed to help you thrive, but you grew anyway.”
The audience? Top university administrators. She urged them to “check on the wildflowers that you replanted here / let us tell you what we need.” Her performance received a standing ovation.
The setting was intimidating, but Grant (A.B. ’25) is not one to shy away from a challenge. Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, she has always been a star student while holding down several jobs from the time she was in high school. She often felt like academics were the one thing she had control over. In seventh grade, she was struggling with family dynamics and was looking for an outlet to process her feelings; she wrote and performed a poem about hope. That was her first standing ovation.
In high school, Grant took full advantage of the limited resources available to her at school. She tried anything and everything, including journalism, law, and engineering. She sang in an a cappella group. And she joined the poetry team.
“My parents always expected me to go to college,” she says now. “But nobody really helped me figure out how to do it.” When Grant was going through the early stages of her college search, her mother, who gave birth to Grant when she was 17, was studying for her bachelor’s degree in nursing. Grant would run flashcard drills with her while Googling different majors for herself.
Hope—and grit—powered Grant through college applications. The organization Matriculate tapped her as a promising applicant, and she was paired with a college student with a similar background to help her with her application. When the acceptances came rolling in, Grant felt herself drawn to LSA—and not just because of its excellent academic programs.
“One of the reasons why I chose Michigan was because it was one of the only schools that started sending me resources immediately,” she recalls. Grant replaced her aging laptop with one from U-M’s Undergraduate Laptop Program, for instance.
—Tyáe Grant (A.B. ’25)
On campus, Grant immediately landed a job at a cafe. But as she explored her interests through coursework and extracurriculars, she found herself wondering whether she could tailor her jobs to her professional goals. “Some students can go to class and don't have to worry about getting income,” she says. “But I knew that was never going to be the case for me.” So she set out to look for on-campus work that would align closer to her goals in social justice.
First, she became a peer advisor through the Summer Bridge Program. Then, she worked for Support for Incoming Black Students (SIBS), matching incoming first-year students with older peers. “It was my training ground in gaining my confidence as a facilitator and mentor,” she says.
Along the way, she won a Caldwell Poetry and Recitation Award through the Lloyd Scholars Program for a poem she wrote called “Color Me Beautiful,” an ode to her journey to self-love. Poetry has become an avenue for advocacy, which Grant champions in her academic studies as well. She is using her experience as an I2A ambassador to complete her fieldwork requirements for her accelerated Master of Social Work program.
When she reflects on her growth, Grant credits her success to her faith and her journey to self-love through a variety of avenues: writing poetry, caring for her natural hair, and going to therapy. “You can’t pour from an empty cup,” she says. “So I fill my cup so I can then be more helpful to others.”
Rajvinder Kaur witnessed her parents working hard throughout her childhood. The family moved to Owosso, a small city about 70 miles northwest of Ann Arbor, when she was seven. Her dad owned one business, then a second, and more recently a third, and she often saw him working 12-hour-plus days.
His was not an easy path. He came from India, alone, to New York City at age 12. Kaur’s mother came from India with her parents. Kaur’s parents met and married, then went on to have three children: oldest sister Simranjit Kaur, Rajvinder (who goes by Raji), and their younger brother Navraaj Singh.
—LSA sophomore Rajvinder Kaur
“They wanted us to have the opportunities in life that they didn’t have,” Raji Kaur says. “They were really big on education, and I always wanted to excel in school in part for myself, but also because they did so much for us.”
And excel she did. The straight-A student once thought that she would attend Michigan State University, which was closer to home, and help her dad with his businesses at the same time. Then her sister became a U-M student, and Kaur began to consider the school as well. She also attended GROE with I2A before her senior year of high school, an experience that helped her understand different paths in higher education.
“So much of it was new to me since my parents didn’t go to college,” Kaur recalls. At GROE with I2A, “they defined what a target school was, what a safety school was, what it takes to apply and get accepted. I left there feeling confident that I could aim for U-M.”
Confidence did not always come easily for Kaur. She was one of a small number of people of color in her hometown, and she felt that distinction—plus her intense focus on academic success—separated her from many peers. The second she stepped foot on the U-M campus as a first-year student last fall, though, she found community.
“I’m not the same person I was. When I go back home, I feel confident now,” she says. “U-M has helped me to be my authentic self. I found my groove here.” Just as she was once helped by an I2A ambassador when she was in the GROE with I2A program, she now is an ambassador who imparts wisdom to younger students who visit campus and whose schools she visits. Over the summer, several GROE with I2A students asked her if she would coach them.
Kaur has big plans for the future, but she also knows that there isn’t a single path to success. She aspires to attend the London School of Economics, intern at a major multinational financial corporation, and, one day, study at an Ivy League law school.
“Nothing is impossible,” she says.
However she gets there, she wants to create a future in which she can repay her parents for all they have done for their family by purchasing a home for them and paying for their vacations.
The close-knit family has a lively group chat where they stay connected even while Kaur and her sister are away at school. Kaur texts the group chat at least twice a day to check in with her parents. “They are the start and end of my day. Every day,” she says, with a catch of emotion in her voice. “Everything I do is for them.”
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| Release Date: | 11/12/2025 |
|---|---|
| Category: | Students |
| Tags: | LSA; Natural Sciences; LSA Magazine; Humanities; Social Sciences; Undergraduate Education; Becky Sehenuk Waite; Katie Vloet; Stephanie Wong; Kessler Scholars; Intend to Attend |
