Belonging
Peer mentors, identity-affirming programs, family conversations and social events make the hidden curriculum visible.
Navigate college
Staff explain financial aid, office hours, internships, research, graduate school and how to ask for help.
Programs
The center coordinates a summer bridge, transfer welcome, faculty connections and a first-generation graduates network.
Naming the hidden curriculum
The center exists to say out loud the things that first-generation students are often expected to already know — what office hours are for, why an internship matters, how to ask a professor for a research spot, what graduate school costs. Peer mentors and staff walk through it without making anyone feel behind.
A place and a network
The Founders Union space has a lounge, a lending library of course texts and staff who will make a call with a student rather than for them. A first-generation graduates network connects current students with alumni who have done it.
In and around Porter Falls
Support at Porter is deliberately clustered on the first two levels of Halvorsen Library so a student can move from an advising conversation to a tutor to a writing consultant without leaving the building or re-explaining the situation. Walk-in hours run late Monday through Thursday during the semester, and everything can also be booked through MyPorter.
The practical details
Who it serves: Students who are first in their family to attend college. Programs: Summer bridge, faculty connections, graduate network. Space: Founders Union, Room 120, with a lending library. These specifics can shift from term to term, so confirm anything time-sensitive — a deadline, an appointment, an eligibility rule — before you count on it.
If you have a question
This is handled by Student Success Center (Halvorsen Library, Level 1). Call (715) 555-0170 or email success@uwporterfalls.edu during the fall and spring terms, or use MyPorter to send a message or book a time. If another office turns out to own the question, they will pass it along rather than send you back to the beginning.
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. Every office, person, building, phone number and statistic on this page is invented; nothing here describes a real institution or a service you can actually contact.