2025 FirstGen Gratitude Report
The year 2025 brought innumerable challenges to our communities, our democracy, and to the world of higher education. Despite the incursions made on our freedoms and institutions, the FirstGen Program at the University of California Press has much to celebrate.
Across academic disciplines, from the humanities, social sciences to life sciences, first-gen authors published ground-breaking scholarship, winning awards and sharing their unique perspectives with a multitude of readers. University of California Press staff led programs to demystify book publishing for first-gen authors and the larger first-gen community. And in the spring, the UC Press Foundation spearheaded a successful giving campaign to raise money in support of our FirstGen Program.
Let’s look back at the numbers.
As we head into this next year, we are proud of the program’s achievements and the accomplishments of our FirstGen authors. As one FirstGen author put it, “[being in the UC Press FirstGen program] shifted my experience from one in which I worried about measuring up and needing to already know the answers, to one in which I felt supported on the journey and safe to ask questions.” Here’s to another year of supporting the work and unique perspectives of first-generation scholars.