Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Education (Ed.D.)

Department

Administrative and Instructional Leadership

First Advisor

Barbara Cozza

Second Advisor

James Coviello

Third Advisor

Stephen Kotok

Abstract

This qualitative phenomenological study investigates the experiences of Black first-generation college students enrolled at a two-year college in the Northeast region of the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study examines the narratives of a historically marginalized population in order to uncover the academic, social, and personal challenges they experienced due to the global health crisis. It also aims to explore the impacts, barriers, and resilience strategies of students through semi-structured interviews, reflective journal writing, and related artifacts. Research has shown that Black college students remain a historically underserved group enrolled in higher education. The Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, 2022) and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (2017), have shown that Black students have had higher college dropout rates from college than any other major racial and ethnic groups. The data from a six-year study of the fall 2010 cohort show that about 44.6% of Black college students did not complete their degree and Black men specifically have the lowest completion rates among all demographic groups. First-generation college students are defined as students whose parents have not graduated with a bachelor’s degree (Cataldi et al., 2018). This group of students often faces challenges regarding their ability to navigate in higher education due to their family backgrounds with limited higher education familiarity. Hence, they remain disproportionately disadvantaged. In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused disruption in the lives of people globally, exposed long-standing systemic inequities in higher education. This study investigates and exposes this inequity, while amplifying the lived experiences of first-generation Black college students.

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