The Barometer of Belonging: How Lived Experience Shapes First-Gen Support

From left: Khouri Lassiter, Danielle Koon, Robin Adams, and Quin Meriweather, the staff of AU's Center for Student Belonging. Photo courtesy of the Center for Student Belonging.

A rising number of Eagles are trailblazers.   

This fall, 15 percent of American University undergraduates—about one in seven—are the first in their family to attend a four-year college, up from 8 percent in 2023. Among the Class of 2030, 18 percent are first-generation.

These Eagles can count the professional staff at the Center for Student Belonging among their biggest campus advocates. After all, they were once in their shoes. 

“You don’t have to know how to navigate being in a room to deserve to be in it,” said Danielle Koon, associate director of education and support programs. “Know that you belong.”

Here, during National First-Gen Week, Koon; associate director Quin Merriweather; director Robin Adams; and assistant director Khouri Lassiter share their first-gen journeys and explain how those experiences inform their work supporting AU students. 

Quin Merriweather 

Photo by Julia Gibson.

Quin Merriweather, Baker/EdD ’27, didn’t plan to go to college.  

Instead, she wanted to emulate her mother, Marcilia, a 26-year Air Force veteran. But on the eve of signing her enlistment for the Marines, her mom asked her to apply to college before following in her footsteps. 

“In a total act of defiance—as only a high school senior can do—I applied to one school,” said Merriweather, associate director for student equity, access, and retention. She got in. 

At Webster University, a small liberal arts college in St. Louis, Missouri, Merriweather found a community that cared for her. There, she met Colette Cummings, associate dean of students, who remains a mentor. Cummings first taught a shy 19-year-old not to sell herself short. 

“It’s easy to celebrate people when they’re doing really well,” Merriweather said. “But what does it mean to sit with them when they are not doing well? For me, that is the true barometer of belonging—[for it] to exist in both light and shadow.” 

A network of supporters like Cummings helped Merriweather navigate the questions that arose during college, including how to juggle coursework with her federal work-study position and a second job as a bartender. 

Finding her way set Merriweather on a serendipitous path to AU, where she now oversees the Summer Transition Enrichment Program and District Scholars—two initiatives geared toward supporting first-gen Eagles. In May, she will complete her fifth college degree—a doctorate of education in antiracism, equity, and policy. 

Through her work at AU, Merriweather strives to remind students of four simple but powerful words: “I believe in you.” 

“So many times I’m with students who are just like, ‘I’m never going to amount to anything. I’m not worth it,’” she said. “And I look at them, and I say, ‘But you are. You are worth it. You are going to do something remarkable.’”

Danielle Koon

From left, University Advancement's Nina Thomas, Khouri Lassiter and Danielle Koon. Photo by Julia Gibson.

Native Washingtonian Danielle Koon received a crash course in college preparation at Benjamin Banneker High School in Ward 2, but it couldn’t teach her everything. 

When she arrived at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, there was plenty left to learn. 

“I learned about room and board, what needed to be paid, how to pay for books, looking for scholarships, and working on campus,” said Koon, the youngest of five children.

Early on, Koon landed a federal work-study position in student affairs, which helped her forge connections across campus. “It felt like home, like a family that really cared about who I was and who I was becoming,” she said. 

When speaking with students navigating similar journeys, she reminds them that the AU community is in their corner.

“I always want to instill hope in them,” she said. “[They] have the power, with support, to make it out of whatever it is that [they’re] going through. For me, it was really hard to accept help or to even ask for it, and having someone say that to me affirmed to me that they knew what it felt like to have to ask for help.”

Khouri Lassiter

Khouri Lassiter was at a crossroads. Shortly after transferring to Towson University, their father died. 

As the youngest child, their parents had never given them the option of skipping college. But suddenly, finishing a degree felt unattainable.

“All the financial burden fell on my mom,” Lassiter said. “I couldn’t go back to school. It was very overwhelming.” 

Lassiter launched a GoFundMe campaign to help ease the burden. The Towson community rallied; within four days, the campaign reached its goal. 

In Towson’s Center for Student Diversity, Lassiter found another kind of support. “I would not be here without them . . . that’s just how impactful that they were.” 

In their role at AU, Lassiter sees an opportunity to pay forward that support. Their message to first-gen students: You deserve to be here.

“You really just got to hop [out] the bed sometimes and turn your swag on, and just remember . . . that you are more than deserving of this experience here at AU,” Lassiter said. 

Robin Adams

Photo by Julia Gibson.

Robin Adams didn’t always have it together. 

“There were times when I thought I would never graduate from Howard,” she said. “I felt like I was always off track, and there's always somebody who had to get me back on track.”

After growing up primarily in New York City, Adams took a gap year to work with AmeriCorps. But when she arrived for her first day at Howard University, officials had no record of her enrollment. 

“I really thought that I had all the answers when I really did not,” she said. 

After solving that registration snafu, Adams encountered lesson after lesson on the way to her degree. One major challenge was learning how to take full advantage of campus resources. 

She now reminds AU students that college can be mess—and that there is a campuswide network ready to help.

“First gen is akin to being an explorer,” Adams said. “They are the first, and to be the first can be amazing. There are resources here to help them, so [they should] wear [their] first-gen identity as a badge of honor as opposed to thinking that there’s something that they’re missing.”