01
Challenges + supports
What challenges do first-in-family MRU undergraduates face, and what tools, relationships, and forms of support do they draw on — or need — to respond to them?
Research 02 / Arts-based action SoTL
First-in-Family at MRU
An arts-based Scholarship of Teaching & Learning project developed with Mount Royal University students who are the first in their families to pursue post-secondary education.
FormatSeven arts + dialogue sessions
Participatory conversation, art-making, reflection, and qualitative research training.
ParticipantsMRU student co-creators
Undergraduates who are first-in-family to pursue post-secondary education.
FundingMokakiiks SoTL Collaborate Grant
Mount Royal University's team-based Scholarship of Teaching & Learning grant stream.
OutputCollective digital mural
Student experiences and future imaginings translated through participatory art.
Research questions
Experience, support, possibility
The study asked not only what first-in-family students encounter, but how participatory arts might amplify their own accounts of university life and accessible futures.
02
Arts-based engagement
How can arts-based engagement affect first-in-family students' experiences and amplify their visions for more accessible post-secondary education?
Participatory method
Students as co-creators
The project positioned students as active co-creators rather than simply research subjects. Across the arts-and-dialogue program, participants reflected on pathways into university, networks of support, joys and challenges, and imagined what more accessible post-secondary education could look like.
The work combined facilitated conversation with reflective and imaginative art-making. It also included qualitative research training for student co-creators, making research practice itself part of the learning process.
DialogueShared reflection on first-in-family university experience.
Art-makingParticipant images and visual experimentation as research material.
Co-creationStudents shaped the conversation and the project's collective outputs.
Research trainingQualitative methods were incorporated into the participatory program.
Collective visual archive
The mural was created by Melanie Schambach from student co-creators' conversations and artistic work. It gathers pathways, obstacles, landscapes, institutional forms, and imagined futures into one shared visual field.
From project to public scholarship
Findings in circulation
The project moved from participatory sessions into public Scholarship of Teaching & Learning conversations. Pérez-Rivera's publication and presentation record lists a 2025 Banff SoTL Symposium presentation titled (Re)Imagining First-in-Family Student Experience Through Participatory Arts-Based Action Research.
Mount Royal's events archive also lists a presentation devoted to findings and recommendations from the study, extending the work from student co-creation toward institutional reflection on first-in-family experience.
15 October 2025 / BanffSymposium for Scholarship of Teaching & Learning
(Re)Imagining First-in-Family Student Experience Through Participatory Arts-Based Action Research.
MRU public presentationFindings + recommendations
Mount Royal's events archive records a presentation sharing learnings from the project.
Funding contextMokakiiks SoTL Collaborate
MRU describes this grant stream as supporting larger team-based investigations spanning multiple classes or contexts.
Sources + further reading