The River Hawk Scholars Academy (RHSA) is an academic success program at UMass Lowell (UML) that supports students in navigating and thriving through the first-generation college experience. RHSA’s innovative, award-winning approach roots this experience in:
- forming deep and lasting connections with their professors, their peers, and support staff,
- creating a wide variety of research, career-connected, and leadership opportunities driven by curricular and co-curricular offerings,
- celebrating their successes through a strength-based approach that recognizes the courage and intellectual merit of our University’s thousands of students who will be the first in their family to complete a four year-college degree in the United States.
Student success is shaped by a community of care that includes faculty, staff and peers working together to create impactful opportunities for learning and belonging:
- RHSA is guided by a team of dedicated, expert staff.
- The first-year experience fosters strong connections with faculty and peers to help students navigate their academic paths and engage fully in their departments and colleges.
- Over 100 faculty members across all five colleges teach RHSA courses or collaborate with the program.
RHSA students in their second year and above, focus on opportunity. Opportunities include: taking RHSA courses, building mentoring relationships centered on academic and career success, developing as leaders and engaging in career-connected research and community learning experiences. Many of these opportunities include a chance to earn scholarship money or are paid positions. RHSA students also benefit from dedicated success coaching, priority course registration and early campus move-in.
RHSA is grounded in the first-generation experience but not limited by it. The program encourages each student to discover what being first-generation means to them while emphasizing learning, growth and purpose both inside and outside the classroom. As wrap-around program that complements students’ academic major, RHSA partners closely with departments, dean’s offices and Academic and Student Affairs to ensure the students’ experiences through RHSA align with their broader goals at UMass Lowell - to excel academically, earn their degrees and move forward with confidence into graduate study or their chosen careers.
