First Year Experience

Essential intent:

To promote educational persistence and facilitate the design of a meaningful life.

Our learning culture:

For traditional college students, the first-year marks the start of a new academic journey but also the beginning of one’s adult life. In a human existence marked by constant change, the transition to college will be one of the single biggest changes a person can experience. It is a transition that is at once daunting, exciting, confusing, and at times can even be surprisingly marvelous and surprisingly mundane.

While this transition is big for almost every student, it is also true that no two people will have the same first-year experience. FYE’s courses and programming are designed to actively inspire a student to explore the unique contexts where they feel success, to highlight a student’s unique strengths with the intention of expanding those strengths to other areas, and to support students in beginning an adult life of learning and development- most of which will happen outside of any formal schooling. The end result, we hope, is the beginning of adult life of meaning and personal fulfillment, regardless of chosen major, career aspirations, income potential, identity, family of origin, misfortune, or good luck.

It is our commitment to students, their families, and our colleagues that one’s course experience or programmatic interaction with FYE will be marked by attention to supporting the development of, not strictly schooling of, an individual student. Educational persistence will require more than good grades and study strategies. Educational persistence will require that our individual values, aspirations, and dreams drive our hard work. And so, discovering, honoring, and supporting those individual values, aspirations, and dreams form the foundation of not only student success, but our development as human beings.