Breaking Through: A First-Generation Perspective

Creating academic opportunity has become a personal mission for Seth Jacobson, MS global and international education ’13, PhD educational leadership ’17.

Higher education was not the obvious path for Jacobson, as a child.

“I was born and raised in West Philly and I was the first in my family to go to college,” he says.

Driving with his family toward Center City, he remembers seeing campuses on Chestnut Street that seemed shrouded in mystery.

“I would see Drexel on my left and Penn on my right, and I never really understood what those places were,” he says. “I know firsthand how challenging it can be to access college when you are low income, when you don’t have many people in your life who have gone through college before.”

As he navigated high school, the daughter of a family friend told him he should go on to college. She set up tours at local schools, and with the help of federal and state financial aid, institutional grants, and “sizable student loans,” he was able to attend Chestnut Hill College in a leafy residential neighborhood of Philadelphia. He completed his bachelor’s degree there and went on to do national service through AmeriCorps VISTA.

He did his service at Drexel’s (then) Center for Civic Engagement, where he launched a middle-school mentoring program which would grow into the Lindy Scholars Middle School Mentoring civic engagement program, named in honor of the University’s longtime and late benefactor, Philip B. Lindy.

The AmeriCorps program led to a full-time job at the center. As a Drexel employee, he received tuition remission that enabled him to earn a master’s degree in education. An assistantship later put him through a Drexel doctoral program, also in education.

Jacobson now works to give others the opportunity he was fortunate enough to have, as executive director of the Octavius Catto Scholarship and associate vice president for the Community College of Philadelphia.

The scholarship is an anti-poverty initiative, “an opportunity for thousands of Philadelphians to be able to go to Community College of Philadelphia for free,” he says. Eligible, low-income city residents get their tuition and books paid, along with a monthly stipend to help with transportation and food.

“Non-financial supports are also critical to student success, so we have a comprehensive team of professionals dedicated to supporting our Catto scholars,” he says, referring to the program’s success mentors, academic advisers, financial aid specialists and career coaches.

Founded in 2021 by CCP and the administration of former Mayor Jim Kenney with a five-year, $47.4 million investment, the scholarship program has already seen 68 students earn their degrees. There are now nearly 1,500 enrolled in the fast-growing program.

Jacobson wants others to know that CCP is open to all, and that it’s possible to attend “without going into massive debt.”

At Drexel, he experienced an awakening.

“Drexel was my first professional, 9-to-5 experience,” he says. “And working with the Center for Civic Engagement, now the Lindy Center for Civic Engagement, as my first career out of college: That was very formative.

“It gave me a stronger understanding of universities’ responsibilities, a recognition of all the different ways in which colleges and universities can and should support their surrounding communities,” he adds.

Studying at Drexel empowered him to bring that vision to life, as he works to transform educational systems to better meet the needs of marginalized students and communities.

“I was very fortunate to get into a full-time PhD program that included an assistantship; the tuition was essentially covered,” he says. Given his working-class background and his family’s financial struggles, “it was a huge deal to be able to go to an institution that could support me in getting those degrees, without my having to pay an enormous amount and go into a lot of debt.”