“The Graduate: The Hidden Curriculum of Post-College Life,” is a course that prepares first-generation and low-income (FGLI) seniors for their post-college transition. Launched in Spring 2025, the course combines an academic lens with a tangible, practical lens on financial literacy, identity, and personal and professional relationships.
qualitative research
written analysis
semi-structured interviews
The Graduate was created in collaboration with the Georgetown Scholars Program, which provides FGLI students with advising & mentorship, community building, necessity funding, and advocacy. After the success of Mastering the Hidden Curriculum — a course for FGLI students to examine and reflect on their identities and experiences during their first year at GU — GSP and the Red House collaborated again to create a course for graduating FGLI students.
Over the course of the 2023–2024 academic year, the Red House team — Aranza Obscura, Beth Harlan, Susannah McGowan, and myself — conducted focus groups with 68 GSP alumni, volunteers/mentors, faculty, and staff, which resulted in a total of 45 hours of discussion and analysis.
From these interviews, we gathered three overarching findings:
First-generation students have a specific mindset and skills they can leverage
We need to dispel the belief that “everyone else has everything figured out,”
The need to maintain a focus on values and purpose when making decisions in the post-college years.
The focus group findings were used to create an initial syllabus, which was then further developed in collaboration with the course’s teaching team. “The Graduate: The Hidden Curriculum of Post-College Life” was piloted in Spring 2025 with 23 students.