From First-Gen Student to Professor: Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse’s Grad School Journey

If you’re considering graduate school, feeling uncertain about your career direction, or wondering how to overcome obstacles along the way, the latest episode of Victors in Grad School is an inspiring must-listen. In this candid conversation, Dr. Christopher Lewis welcomes Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse—faculty member at the University of Michigan-Flint and Director of the Inclusive History Project—to share her remarkable journey from first-generation college student to tenured professor.

Themes of Resilience and Self-Discovery

One of the strongest themes throughout the episode is the importance of self-discovery and adaptability. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse describes how she began her academic journey with aspirations to become an engineer, drawn by the promise of a lucrative career. However, after facing academic challenges and realizing her passion for humanities, she boldly changed her major to Women’s Studies with a minor in Native American Studies.

Her honest reflection on the embarrassment and fear of changing majors—and the eventual pride in pursuing a path she loved—serves as a powerful reminder that the undergraduate years are a time for self-discovery. As Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse puts it, “undergrad is really about self-discovery and figuring out what you are passionate about and what you’re good at.”

Finding Your ‘Why’ and Keeping Education a Priority

The podcast explores the critical importance of understanding your motivation, or “why,” when pursuing graduate education. Facing academic probation early on, Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse shares how establishing her goals helped her prioritize her studies over distractions. She emphasizes the necessity of delayed gratification, citing how sacrifices made in the present can lead to future rewards.

For anyone balancing work, school, and life, her advice resonates: “To do well and achieve at a high level, education can’t be your side hustle. It needs to be your primary focus.”

Mentorship, Support, and Building Community

A standout lesson is the value of seeking help and building a support network. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse encourages students to engage with faculty, campus resources, and mentors—even those who may not share similar backgrounds. She credits her success to mentors who pushed her with compassion and honesty, reminding listeners that real growth comes from accountability and empathy.

Navigating Change and Overcoming Challenges

From moving across states, adapting to new cultures, and overcoming imposter syndrome as a first-generation student, Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse shares how each experience built the resilience necessary for graduate school and beyond. Her candid stories about culture shock, isolation, and finding her community in Michigan are both relatable and motivating for anyone facing similar transitions.

Final Takeaway

This episode of Victors in Grad School offers invaluable insights on overcoming setbacks, embracing change, and building meaningful connections. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse’s journey is a testament to persistence and the lasting rewards of pursuing a path that aligns with both passion and purpose. If you’re navigating your own educational journey, tune in for encouragement, practical advice, and inspiration to keep going—no matter where you start or what challenges you face.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:00:08]:
Success in graduate school.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]:
Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. And as always, every week, I love being able to talk to you about the journey that you're on. And it is a journey. Each person that is thinking about graduate school will go through a different experience and will be on their own journey as that leads them to a specific program, a specific degree, and then beyond the program into the world of work and what you plan to do with that degree itself. And every week, I love being able to bring you different people with different experiences that can share some of the journeys that they've been on, whether they are currently in graduate school, graduated a while back, or whatever their journey was.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:02]:
But each person can share with you something a little bit different. So today I'm really excited to be able to introduce you to a new guest. Dr. Lisa Laperouse is with us today. And Dr. Laparouse is a faculty member at the University of Michigan, Flint, but she's also also the director of the Inclusive History Project at the University of Michigan, Flint. And she has her own graduate school journey that led her from being in California to Arizona to Michigan and being here at the University of Michigan, Flint. And I'm really excited for her to be able to reflect back and share some of her own experiences with us today.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:43]:
Dr. Laperouse, thanks so much for being here today.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:01:46]:
Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:48]:
So I want to take you back in time and I want to go back because I know that you did your undergraduate degree at the University of California, Davis. And at some point during that time at UC Davis, you made a decision. You made a decision because you were getting a Bachelor of Arts degree in Women's Studies with a minor in Native American Studies. And at some point you made a decision to keep going and to go on further for a graduate degree. Bring me back to that point and what was going through your head as you were making those decisions?

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:02:20]:
Well, let me give you a little bit of background information. So I'm a first generation college student. And so the idea was sold to me early on. In elementary school, we went to Mott Field where they have NASA Aerospace, and they constantly said, if you went to college, you'd make a lot of money. So in fifth grade, I was like, sign me up. And I was very Impressed with my mock fields, I was like, I'm going to be an engineer. Engineers make great money. And so that was my thought process through middle school, through high school, until I went to college.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:02:55]:
I went to college and I was a high performer at unfortunately a low performing school. So what that means is I did not have the best academic preparation for university life. And I think I started out having this idea of, well, you know, I played sports, I was class president, you know, all I have to do is go to school. So this is going to be easy. In my first semester I was on academic probation and I quickly had to change up my study habits and my focus because I thought, oh, this is so embarrassing, I'm the first to go and I'm going to be the first to get kicked out. So part of that though was I was still interested in pursuing engineering. And engineering requires you to take a lot of advanced math courses. And as a high schooler, I had the option.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:03:51]:
My school did not offer calculus. If you wanted to take calculus, you had to be bused to a different school at 7 o' clock in the morning before school actually started. And I was class president and I had the option to take the leadership class with my friends or calculus. And I made the decision to hang out with my friends in leadership rather than calculus. So the first time I ever saw calculus was in a quarter system. So U of M Flint is, is on a semester system. A quarter system changes classes every about seven weeks. That is not how you want to experience calculus for your first time.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:04:28]:
There were a lot of tears, a lot of office hours, and by my second semester I had realized that I can continue down this pathway, but it was going to be very difficult. I was rocking these humanities, I was doing really well and we'd have to read like seven books a semester. And I thought, well, this is going to be embarrassing. I told everybody it was going to be an engineer. I had the T shirt, but I ended up needing to change my major and then I changed it to Women and Gender Studies. What's now Women and Gender Studies was gender studies then. And to be honest with you, I didn't know what other job there would be other than becoming a professor with that job. So.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:05:13]:
And I also was embarrassed that I had to change my major. And I had told everyone I was going to be this great engineer. So now I said if I tell them I'm going to become a professor without really having any idea what I was talking about. I thought that would be acceptable in my grandfather who was very Important to me. I grew up for the majority of my first 15 years of life with my grandparents. His response was, well, that's not too shabby. So I got the seal of approval to pursue that. So my process was, okay, I need to go to graduate school and become a professor.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:05:48]:
But again, I really didn't know what that meant. And also at the time that I was studying undergrad, this was the time that affirmative action was being challenged. Ethnic studies, any type of branches out of history that wasn't just U.S. history were being challenged, like the validity of those. And so I was also thinking about job prospects. Was there going to be a department available to me to work? And so when I went into my master's program, which was at the University of Arizona, it was a joint program between Mexican American studies and public health. And then again, there was still challenges about the utility of a Mexican American studies degree. So when I decided to go for my PhD, I decided to go into a more traditional, direct relationship between the, the DEGR and an employment opportunity.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:06:45]:
So I went into public health.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:06:47]:
Every person goes on when they're thinking about going to graduate school. They, they go through their own journey to determine where do I want to go, what do I want to do, what type of field do I want to study? Kind of what you were talking about. And you ended up at the University of Arizona. So talk to me a little bit about that journey for yourself. What was going through your head as you were looking at different programs and trying to determine what would be the best fit and what made the University of Arizona the best fit for you?

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:07:13]:
So I think the undergrad is really about self discovery and figuring out what are you really passionate about and what are you good at. And I had taken a special elective course with somebody that was in public health. I didn't even know that existed. I thought the only way to study health was to become a doctor. And I was not interested in that. I am something that's called a sympathetic vomiter. If you vomit, I'm going to vomit. I have a very weak stomach.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:07:45]:
I just knew that I was not cut out for that. But learning about myself, learning about history, learning about my community, really was exciting to me. I was very interested to that. And that work I would complete first. And so that's some of the things you want to look for is what are you gravitating towards, what are you doing really well in school? What do you leave to the side because you're like, oh, this is agonizing. And that may mean you Know, unfortunately, changing your major, but the benefit of going to college is that you do get to pick your career. Like for me, most of my family do jobs because they, that's what they have to do to pay the bills. I have the privilege of doing something not only to pay the bills, but something I enjoy and get fulfillment out of.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:08:32]:
So when I was making that transition, I applied to both PhD programs and master's programs and I was pretty defeated. How I decided to go to Arizona was I only got accepted to one program, so it was an easy choice and I had a very good gpa. But I think for undergrads that are thinking about graduate school, something to think about is PhD programs have really small acceptance. They accept cohorts, and a large cohort is 10 to 15 people. And they're mostly going to select, I would say probably 90% of them, if not more, will select somebody that already has a Master's. So it's important to look at the Master's programs as well and things that align with your service, things that align with your grades and any type of clubs that you did, because then they can see that you have this outstanding interest in that area for your graduate school. So for me, I had done an honors thesis in preparation to try and get accepted into a graduate program, knowing that this would give me some research experience so that I would be a more attractive candidate and hopefully get a position as a research assistant in graduate school. How I learned about the Mexican American Studies program at the University of Arizona was I was on campus.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:09:53]:
I used to hang out on campus all the time and there was a poster on a bulletin board and it was not well publicized. And so they were actually quite surprised to see an out of state student applied to their position. And I was part of their first graduating class and it was a great fit. But some of the things that I did consider that some people may want to also think about is I did know that I wanted to go to graduate school. I had talked to a lot of people about it and there were lots of people that told me that they planned to go back to graduate school. But I noticed that they were five and 10 years out and still hadn't did that. And I was like, I don't want to be in that situation. Also, I was very cognizant of, unfortunately my parents did not qualify for school loans.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:10:41]:
So all of my education was funded by myself, myself taking out school loans, scholarships. So I was very aware of after six months those school loans were going to kick in and I was going to have to start paying those back. And I didn't want to get a job and start a lifestyle that my income would support and then not want to go back to being a starving student again. So I was like, let me just stay a poor student all the way through and just get this done early on and not promise myself I'm going to do it and then never complete that goal.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:15]:
And then after that master's degree, you went on and you continued to get Another degree, a PhD in health behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan. That's a far distance away from where you did your bachelor's and your master's degree. And you went from warmer weather to very cold weather in the winters and having to adjust and really push yourself out of a comfort zone of being in an area where you probably were more comfortable and you knew kind of the culture and you. And you felt a part of the culture where then you moved to a brand new area. So talk to me about that decision process and how you ended up at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:11:58]:
So when I was an undergrad, I did not graduate with high honors. And so I made it a personal mission that I was going to graduate with honors in my master's program, and I did graduate with a 4.0. However, they did not have high honors at my university, which I thought I was going to get the cum laude distinction, but the school didn't allow that. I should say, too, it's so important to have that high gpa because I did not test well on my gre, my graduate record exam. Same thing with the sat. And we know that one of the highest predictors of those scores is your area zip code. So it has to do a lot with the resources that are available to an individual. So, you know, I think I faced a lot of mental challenges, emotional challenges, about whether or not I fit in a university, because I just didn't have the same pedigree or the same experiences as others.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:13:06]:
And it did take me having to think things through and remember that, no, I'm the one that's sitting in those classes. I'm the one that's doing those exams that I also deserve a place there. But that has remained an ongoing challenge. You know, I'm currently, I'm the only tenured Latina professor that I know on our campus, and that's a lonely space to be in. And that comes with some challenges. If I start getting heated in a meeting and are they going to stereotype me as the spicy Latina or whatever? So. So I got a 4.0. So what that meant was I applied to the top five public health programs in the country and I was accepted into Michigan.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:13:48]:
And it's, I'll be honest with you, I only got into one program and that was U of M. And so I'm a religious person. I was like, okay, God has directed me. He only gave me one option for my master's program and one option for my PhD. And so I had only been to the snow once in my life before moving to Michigan. I didn't own a stitch of black clothing because you don't wear black when you live in Arizona. I only had tank tops and flip flops and shorts. So I was completely ill prepared to be in Michigan.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:14:23]:
Also living on the west coast. I'm from the Bay Area. There's a lot of ethnic diversity. Did not that experience that so much in Michigan in Ann Arbor, even though Ann Arbor is a large campus. So that was also challenging in my PhD program too. That was the first time that I had ever been around a lot of students of color that were wealthy and were not first generation students. So it took me some time to kind of find my people in my support network that I had some commonalities. And there were actually a group of us Latinas from California that were first gen that hung out and kind of supported each other.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:15:04]:
But yeah, it was definitely a culture shock. So I mean everything I remember when I, when I got here, everybody was driving American made cars. You know, because you have Ford, you have GM here and back in the Bay Area everybody drove Hondas. And I was like, where are all the Hondas? Where are the people with the piercings? Where's all the colored hair? Like I was just so used to a different way of life. And so I think that can be an unexpected challenge of how hard it's going to be to kind of integrate yourself into a new kind of environment. And so that does take getting outside your comfort zone and meeting people, joining clubs, getting out of the house and trying to find your community so that you do have that support. Because fortunately for me, as much as my family wanted to be supportive, they had never gone through the experiences that I had in college. So it was really hard for them to wrap their head around what the challenges were or why I was so upset about not doing well on the exam.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:16:07]:
And actually my mom had asked me to leave college a couple of times because I called home crying saying it was so hard. And she was like, if this is going to be this distressing to you, Then maybe you should leave. And I thought, oh my God, what bad advice. Like I'll suck it up, you know, so it's difficult, but it's not impossible. Find your people.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:25]:
So you found success in your master's degree, your doctorate degree. And as you moved into those different places, there are different expectations and different expectations from being an undergraduate student to being a master's student, to being a doctoral student. Talk to me about those transitions for yourself. And as you think back to the transition to the University of Arizona, the University of Michigan, and to the different programs and the different expectations of faculty, what did you have to do to set yourself up for success as you transitioned into the program? And what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout the entirety of those programs? And it may be different at both the master's and doctoral level.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:17:09]:
I think the very first thing I had to do, especially after that first semester being on academic program probation, is understanding my why. Why was I there? Why was this important? What was that long term goal and making sure that my education was my priority. It couldn't be socializing with my friends, it couldn't be. Like I said at the time, there was affirmative action being challenged. It wasn't sleeping on the steps and doing the hunger strike, it was going to rallies and stuff. But my primary goal was to graduate. And so that really meant prioritizing and making sacrifices to ensure that that was always at the forefront of what I was doing. And I would have to say that that was the case all throughout.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:17:55]:
You know, when I had a lot of friends that didn't go to college and they were buying fancy cars and they always had money and I was like trying to scrape together 20 bucks to buy a pizza. And I thought, wow, like they have these great lifestyles. What am I doing? And you really have to accept, accept delayed gratification because eventually the tables did turn where that nice sports car, well, they're still driving it 10 years later and you know, they took a lot longer to move out of their parents homes. And so the fruits of your labor do show up, but it's not necessarily as quickly as you'd like. And so coming to terms with that, I think is also important for myself. I've lived across the country for a very long time from my family. And I had to again understand for myself why that sacrifice was necessary to keep going. Because it's hard.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:18:57]:
You know, I missed all the birthdays, all the big celebrations, but again, I had specific goal that I had in mind and I kept that as A priority. And that's not to say I never went home, but it wasn't the same as living in the same city or the same state where you can go home for the barbecues and all this other stuff. You know, there were a lot of things that I did miss. So I think the delayed gratification, I think continuing to prioritize your education as first as a faculty person, I know a lot of students have to work full time. I had to work also, but I worked on campus. I worked jobs that were, I would say, complimentary to my work schedule. Because to do well and to achieve like at a high level, education can't be your side hustle. It needs to be your primary focus.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:19:48]:
And sometimes it's not the right time to go to school. I'm not saying that you're not cut out for school because if you would have looked at my profile in high school, child of a teenage mother, you know, I had all the indicators that I would not be a college, let alone a PhD, somebody with a PhD. So I think also you have to find the self esteem in yourself to keep going and the courage because there will be people, instructors included, that'll say that maybe you're not cut out for this, but you have to work with the tenacity and a resilience to continue to push through.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:20:25]:
So as you think about your graduate degree and you think about the different degrees that you received along the way, you started in one area, you ended up in public health. And as you reflect back on your undergrad, your grad, your doctoral degrees, talk to me about the interplay with those degrees. Because not everybody, when they go and get an undergraduate degree is going to get a job specifically in that specific area. You may end up in a very different place than where you began. So talk to me about that journey for yourself and the learning and how it built upon each other to where you ended in teaching in the area that you're teaching now.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:21:06]:
I really kind of think as an undergraduate education as the mechanism to help you identify credible information and to really be a critical thinker. This is the time where you really learn how to identify sources of information and evaluate them to figure out are there motives behind the person that is advertising this or making this statement. So you become a critical thinker and those critical thinking systems skills are applicable in any type of position. I feel like in the master's program, now that you have identified where to find information, you have a better command of knowledge in your specific areas. So then you can start to really Craft important questions about the gaps that remain there, and start to move science forward by pursuing new kind of pathways to understanding certain phenomena. And, you know, for people that have historically been excluded or underrepresented in universities, their voices, their perspectives are important because we may not have heard them before. So I think the first thing is about kind of discovery and finding information. The second part in the master's is really about beginning to start to ask our own questions.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:22:30]:
And then in the PhD, I think it's about creating knowledge. It's not just asking the questions, but now pursuing those questions and helping to find answers, moving science again forward and challenging existing thought processes. So with the inclusive history project, one of the things that we do is there are narratives that are put forward and, you know, they're evidence based. But one of the things that we do is say, well, whose voices are represented and whose voices are missing? And is this a comprehensive understanding of these events or are there perspectives that are missing and maybe can give us a better and more nuanced understanding? So again, it's continuing to be a critical thinker, but it's also learning how to use the skills and apply them to challenge or to expand what we know.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:23:26]:
Now, as you think about graduate students or individuals thinking about becoming a graduate student, and you think back to your, your own experiences, what are some tips that you might offer others that are considering graduate school, no matter what they are going into, that would help them to find success sooner?

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:23:44]:
Ask for help. That is what faculty are here for. And as faculty go on these retreats and we think very deeply about the courses that we teach, the content, the textbooks, I think students would be really surprised how much thought and time goes into planning these things. And when we've gone to these retreats and they ask what inspires you? Everybody mentions students. So most of us do this job because we really find it fulfilling and we like to work with students. And so I know for myself, I was very intimidated being in the academic environment. I didn't speak in class until my junior year of undergrad because I was so terrified of saying something dumb. Now we have a hard time keeping me quiet in any kind of situation.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:24:33]:
But you cannot do this alone. You need to have support. And sometimes your friends or your peers are not the best support for you, because sometimes it's the blind leading the blind. And so it's so important to get to know your resources on campus as well as your faculty. And don't wait. It's so much easier for faculty to help you when you approach them sooner rather than later. And, you know, for myself, I had a lot of life happen to me when I was in school. And so, you know, find that person who's not just going to be a cheerleader and tell you everything's great, but somebody find a good mentor that is going to be honest with you, hold you to accountability, but also do that with empathy and compassion.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:25:22]:
And related to that, I think that I was under the impression that to find a good mentor, the mentor had to be similar to me. They had to be a woman. They had to be, you know, Latina. And I joke about this, but I've had mentors and I've had tormentors. And the tormentors were people that really just broke me down and said, you know, these are all the things you're doing wrong. And it was really defeating. And one of my very best mentors was Dr. Woody Neighbors at U of M, and he's an African American male.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:25:58]:
And so I say this to say, don't discount somebody just because they don't share the same background as you. Find somebody that is invested in your success. But again, that's going to hold you to a high standard, because those relationships will really help you when you do encounter challenges. And that is inevitable in the PhD program. Sometimes you have people that have been successful all the way through. They rock undergrad, they rock their Masters program, and then they get into the PhD program, and all of a sudden they're starting to have some challenges. And that can be really emotionally tolling because you see yourself as this very successful person. And so, again, it's really important to have that support to make sure that you just don't go, don't complete your degree, because that happens a lot, too.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:26:46]:
So being connected, I think, is so core to being well. And I know everybody loves the online environment, but making the commitment to go to campus to be involved in different things, you're only going to be in school for a small blip of your life. And so it's worth the investment, because this is where in my PhD program, I met so many people that they're writing books. I mean, they are doing fabulous things. I can use them for job references, job leads. You never know where that relationship could possibly take you. So it's worth investing that time and effort beyond just the classroom.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:27:25]:
Well, Elise, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today. And it is definitely something that I think that everybody can learn from, because all of us go through these ups and downs, and it's kind of a roller coaster as you go through graduate school and hopefully it's more ups than downs. But there are always going to be those peaks and valleys and you shared some of your own as you went through your own experience. But I truly want to say thank you for sharing your journey today and I wish you all the best.

Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:27:53]:
Thank you so much.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:27:55]:
The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at flintgradofficemflint.edu.