What's offered
A voluntary summer bridge program before first year, a peer mentor who's a year or two ahead, and advisers who expect to explain things families often can't — how financial aid renews, what office hours are for, how to read a degree audit. None of it is remedial; it's translation.
Finding your people
Faculty and staff who were first-generation students display a marker on their office doors and are glad to be asked about it. The first-gen student org runs low-key social events, and graduating first-gen students wear a stole at commencement. Roughly a third of Porter undergraduates are first-generation.
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 one kind of help to another 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 qualifies: Students whose parents or guardians did not complete a four-year degree. Includes: A summer bridge option, a first-gen mentor, and a dedicated adviser who knows the jargon. Community: A student org, faculty and staff who were first-gen themselves, and a graduation stole. Anything time-sensitive — an accommodation, a booking, a deadline — is worth confirming directly before you rely on it, because the specifics here can change from term to term.
If you have a question
The office behind this is Student Success Center (Halvorsen Library, Level 1). Call (715) 555–0170 or email success@uwporterfalls.edu during the fall and spring terms, or sign in to MyPorter to send a message or book a time. If it turns out another office owns the question, they will route it rather than send you back to the start.
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.