Above: Jayde Best (Wheelock’25,’27) leaned on the Newbury Center—a national model for helping first-gen students adjust to college life.
BU’s Newbury Center helps first-gen students find their way
The oldest of eight children, Jayde Best (Wheelock’25,’27) rarely asked for help, counting on her ability to handle anything, even through the loss of her mother in high school. But when she arrived at Boston University from Maryland as a first-generation college student, going it alone made for a “very rough” start.
Then she met Maria Dykema Erb, executive director of the Newbury Center—a national model for helping undergraduate and graduate students who would be the first in their family to graduate adjust to campus life.
“She made me feel better about being in this rough season that I was in,” Best says, “and she told me that it wasn’t going to be forever.”
The center offers academic support as well as community-building activities and mentoring programs.
“We want to be a first-generation destination,” says Erb, a first-gen student herself.
The center gave Best hope, a support group, and a push when she needed one. She learned to believe in herself and her ambitions: “I’ve just learned to do it scared, to do it uncomfortable, to do it unsure.”
In May 2025, she graduated from Wheelock College of Education & Human Development with a bachelor of science, specializing in child and adolescent mental health. In fall 2025, she began a master’s program in child life and family-centered care.
“I want to be able to bring a smile to children’s faces during some of their darkest times,” she says.