Building Fulbright Success by Treating Every Student Like a First-Generation Scholar

• David Shein, independent educational consultant in Red Hook, New York, helped hundreds of students apply for  competitive awards by applying lessons from his own first-generation college experience.

When No One Shows You the Map

Red Hook, N.Y, Jun 09, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — Imagine a student sitting in their dorm room staring at a Fulbright application. Imagine it’s a first-generation college student from a working-class family who had never heard of the scholarship until her advisor mentioned it. The instructions felt like a foreign language. They almost closes the tab.

Instead, the student visits an office designed to help students who, like her, are navigating college without a roadmap. Over the next six months, the students gets help decoding the unwritten rules of competitive scholarships. They won a Fulbright to study abroad.  They’ve never before left the US.

David Shein knows what it feels like to navigate college without a map. He was a first-generation college student before the term existed. That experience became the foundation of his 25-year career at Bard College and informed his work as a Fulbright Program Adviser.  It ow shapes his work as an independent educational consultant.

Frameworks That Level the Playing Field

“I was a first-generation college student before we knew what that meant,” Shein says. “While I didn’t yet have the label, the experience of navigating college without a roadmap was integral to my experience as a student and has been the foundation of my professional practice.”

At Bard, Shein founded the Academic Resources Center and Disability Support Services. He co-founded the Center for Student Life & Advising. He helped to launch the Clemente Course in the Humanities, which delivers free college-level humanities instruction to adults in under-resourced neighborhoods, in two nearby cities. He helped secure accreditation for more than a dozen programs and advised scores of students through competitive post-graduate awards.

“At the core of this work is a commitment to making the full college experience accessible to students, to empowering those students to participate in meaningful ways in what can often feel like an alien environment, and to helping them connect with their college experiences in ways that impact their lives outside of and beyond their time in university,” Shein explains.

His approach helped to turn Bard into a Fulbright powerhouse: it was named a top producer of Fulbright U.S. Scholars three years in a row and he was invited by the Institute for International Education to lead training workshops for Fulbright advisers from across the nation.  ..  

Making the Invisible Visible

Shein’s framework rests on a simple truth. The students who need guidance most often don’t know what questions to ask. They don’t see the invisible infrastructure that supports traditional students.

The Clemente Course demonstrates this philosophy at scale. Shein helped launch the program in multiple locations, providing 110 hours of instruction in humanities disciplines to adults who otherwise would never access college-level courses.

“It delivers a college-level introduction to humanities  neighborhoods which tend to be under-resourced,” Shein says. “It’s intended for people who otherwise wouldn’t have access to this level of engagement and discourse. It’s for people who wish they’d taken this kind of course in college, or wish they’d gone to college.”

The program covers tuition, books, and childcare. It removes barriers rather than asking students to overcome them.

Five Steps to Create Access

Shein’s approach to student success follows five clear steps that anyone can adapt to their own educational setting.

Phase 1: Make the Invisible Curriculum Visible Map out the unwritten rules, unspoken expectations, and invisible networks that traditional students navigate automatically. Write them down. Make them visible. Create a checklist of what students need to know but might never think to ask.  (Hidden Curriculum)

Phase 2: Build Infrastructure Before Crisis Don’t wait for students to struggle and then react. Establish support systems, advising frameworks, and resource centers before students need them. Proactive infrastructure prevents problems rather than managing damage. (Intrusive Advising)

Phase 3: Design for Those Who Need It Most Build programs that serve students who face the highest barriers. If your system works for first-generation students, students with disabilities, and students from under-resourced communities, it will work for everyone. (Universal Design)

Phase 4: Remove Barriers, Don’t Just Offer Support Don’t ask students to overcome obstacles. Eliminate the obstacles. Provide books, childcare, transportation, and funding. Treat access as a structural issue, not an individual challenge. (Structural Equity)

Phase 5: Connect Education to Life Beyond Campus Help students see how their academic work connects to their lives outside the classroom and after graduation. Make the full college experience accessible, not just the courses. Show how intellectual engagement shapes their futures. (Engaged Education)

Quick Wins 

Start small with these concrete actions you can take immediately.

• Write down three unwritten rules in your educational environment and share them explicitly with students who might not know them.

• Create a one-page guide to a competitive opportunity, scholarship, or program that first-generation students rarely access.

• Identify one structural barrier students face (cost, transportation, childcare) and research solutions to remove it.

• Reach out to one student who might not know what questions to ask and offer specific guidance without waiting for them to seek help.

• Document the invisible network connections that traditional students use and create a visible pathway for all students.

About David Shein

David Shein is an independent educational consultant based in Red Hook, New York. He spent over 25 years at Bard College in roles including Vice President for Student Success and Network Integration, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dean of Studies, and William Lensing Senior Lecturer in the Humanities. At Bard, he founded the Academic Resources Center and Disability Support Services and co-founded the Center for Student Life & Advising. He launched the Clemente Course in the Humanities in multiple locations and advised hundreds of students through competitive post-graduate awards. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York.