We’re just a few weeks out from the start of Fall classes (horrors!), which means we’re also a month away from the glorious return of FYEX, or First-Year Experience.
FYEX was originally a class we started offering before the pandemic to first-year students by way of an extended orientation to the college. Many Vol State students are first-generation college students, which means they don’t have parents or grandparents who graduated (or usually, attended) college.
The “hidden curriculum” of navigating a large organization like a college can be very challenging—do I have to pay to use the tutoring center? What’s the office called where I pay my bill and where is it located? Will my advisor be mad at me if I fail a class and we have to re-do my schedule for next semester? (No, the Cashier’s Office in the Ramer Building, and no, they’re just happy and proud that you’re going to try again.)
Many colleges across the country have implemented similar classes, with the goal of giving students a leg up on study skills, major selection, financial aid, and understanding other necessary elements of the college experience. It’s considered a “high-impact practice,” that is, something that is very supportive of student learning and persistence in college.
However, in higher ed we often try to make the solution to one problem the solution to every problem, which is what we did at Vol State with the first iteration of FYEX. It was a 1.5 credit hour class (already confusing) that was stuffed to the gills with about 4 credit hours’ worth of information and work.
That information was all good—but it was overwhelming to teach, let alone to take. So we took a little break, had a little reset, and then a team of very smart faculty stripped the course down to the studs and rebuilt it. Now it’s one credit hour and it has basically two goals: get to know the college (processes, offices, maybe even a classmate or two) and get an introduction to the study skills that are important for your major or area of study.
While the class is open to all students, only students who require learning support—additional co-curricular classes in math, reading, or writing—are mandated to take the course. These are the students who are most at risk of dropping out before finishing any college credits, let alone an entire program.
Refocusing the curriculum of the course and targeting the students who most need the information will hopefully bring about an overall increase in the number of students who persist from fall to spring semesters.
The critical piece to making sure that happens, though, is having the right instructors in place. Considerable data exists showing that students who believe that at least one faculty or staff members cares about them as a person are more likely to achieve their goals (see the Gallup Higher Education Report for more on this).
So it’s immensely important that we select instructors who can help students build that sense of belonging by caring about their success. Fortunately, this class should be a fun one to teach, and our faculty and staff love nothing more than making a difference for students.
FYEX is just one small part of the many efforts we make to support student success. We’re never sure what will work for an individual students or even an entire entering first-year class—students, weirdly, keep changing with the times, and higher ed often struggles to keep up.
Regardless, it’s never wasted effort to wrap students in all the care we can show them, and that’s what FYEX is, in the end. I’m excited to see how this new iteration achieves that goal.
