Dissertation Proposal Announcement Ed.D. Program: Jaquil White “College Admission Isn’t Acceptance: See Me, Affirm Me’: Exploring Systemic Social-Emotional Learning in First-Year Seminars for FGLI Black Male Students Belonging in EOF Programs”

In the United States, first-generation, low-income (FGLI) Black male students face systemic barriers shaped by race, gender, and socioeconomic status, contributing to persistently low college retention rates and enduring racial wealth and mobility gaps after graduation. This single instrumental case study examines the experiences of first-year FGLI Black male students enrolled in the EOF Strategies for College Success (SCS) course, a first-year seminar (FYS) at Rutgers University–Newark designed to support students’ transition to college through community building, identity exploration, and social-emotional development. Because apparently surviving college while navigating structural inequities was not already enough labor for one human being. Research on FGLI Black male students has traditionally emphasized quantitative outcomes such as GPA, credit accumulation, and retention, while paying less attention to psychosocial development, identity formation, and sense of belonging. In higher education, belonging is shaped by students’ emotional connection to their institution and relationships with peers, faculty, and staff, and it remains a critical factor in Black male persistence. Although systemic social-emotional learning (SEL) has been widely studied in K–12 settings, limited research examines its impact in higher education, particularly among FGLI Black male students. Additionally, there is limited research on how first-year seminar courses support the transition, persistence, and sense of belonging of FGLI Black male students. This study is grounded in the Transformative Social-Emotional Learning (tSEL) framework developed by Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), which extends traditional SEL by centering equity, identity, and the experiences of marginalized populations. The framework emphasizes five competencies: identity, agency, belonging, collaborative problem-solving, and curiosity. Facilitated by EOF staff, the SCS course seeks to strengthen college readiness, foster peer relationships, and support students’ social-emotional growth through an equity-centered approach. Using semi-structured interviews, this study explores how participation in SCS influences motivation, persistence, and sense of belonging among FGLI Black male students. The findings aim to deepen understanding of how first-year seminar courses can serve as systemic institutional supports that enhance the college experiences such as sense of belonging, persistence, and social emotional development to support academic success of FGLI Black men.