CEA CAPA Education Abroad
First-Year Experience Abroad on Your Campus

First-Year Experience Abroad on Your Campus

The first year of a student's college career is critical for their success and retention. In addition to supporting retention and student success, a First-Year Experience (FYE) program abroad can help a campus energize its student body around international education and set an institution apart from its peers. In this presentation we heard from campuses that successfully implemented FYE programs, and why and how those programs came to fruition.

Presentation Resources

Didn't get a chance to attend our FYE webinar? Here's a recording to get you up to speed!

Q&A

Our Q&A responses were answered by Mary Cook from Colorado School of Mines, John Peters from Marist College, and CEA staff who facilitate our FYE Abroad programs. 

Q: Are the courses abroad taught by CEA, Mines/Marist professors, or a combination of the two? 

A: For the Mines program, the majority of courses were taught by faculty from SKEMA and the students were in class with other students. Mines transferred the coursework back as Mines credit. Mines did teach one of their own courses online, but they do not plan to repeat that in the future based on student feedback. In coming terms, Mines students will take all of their courses from SKEMA. For the Marist program, two Marist faculty live and teach in Florence for a full semester and teach a first-year seminar based on a local theme and a writing course. Two of the five classes a Marist Florence student will take abroad are taught by a Marist faculty member and the other classes are taught by local faculty. In Dublin, the classes are designed by Marist and taught by local faculty at the host affiliate.  

Q: Are FYE Abroad students at Mines or Marist required to take a language course?

A: Marist requires Florence students to take at least one semester of Italian language. Mines has no language requirement but we do enroll the students in a language course while in-country. The course satisfies a mid-level humanities requirement. 

Q: What have you found to be some effective promotion & recruitment strategies for FYE programs?  

A: The majority of promotions and recruiting initiatives are handled through the Admissions/Enrollment office for both Mines and Marist. They are the experts in recruiting in the high school space. Both Mines and Marist mentioned that strong collaboration with the Admissions/Enrollment arm is important. Mines sends out a regular newsletter to prospective families and includes the FYE Abroad opportunity, with a heavy emphasis put on the impact on an international experience and one’s career potential.  

Q: Could Mary and John speak to the benefits that stood out most to each of them in their process of developing the FYE Program?

A: (Marist) The main benefit for me and my office (Marist) in freshman programming is the relatively clean slate that one starts with vs. establishing a program along the more beaten path of SO/JR/SR semester abroad. Because freshmen require much more contact and mentoring, your program almost automatically requires you to establish mechanisms for high-impact learning and the establishment of a living-learning community. As Mary noted, because these students have never been to college, whatever do you, that is college. So you're able to set a high bar for academic and personal commitment and have more freedom for creative programming. 

(Mines) The excitement demonstrated by the students and their parents for this unique program is a great motivator. First-year students are eager to challenge themselves and yet they are also quite compliant and adaptable which allows room for us to include creativity and flexibility. Our program is new and our learning curve has been steep. First-year students are both forgiving and also excited to provide feedback since they feel some ownership in shaping the program for future students. As an international educator, it is stimulating to build a new program from the ground up because it allows for imagination, innovation, and provides the opportunity to develop cross-collaborations with colleagues and departments across campus. Building a new program has a LOT of challenges but knowing it allows our first-year students to participate in a transformative and impactful experience at the start of their college career makes it worth all the hard work and effort.

Q: Do you have any information on short-term programs that are 4 weeks or less?  Our institution does not have the capacity for a semester-long program.  

A: CEA welcomes the opportunity to explore short-term options with our U.S. university partners.  Short-term FYE programs do exist and can be successful when intentionally paired with fall programming.  We have experience in our Custom & Faculty-led division and will be happy to share best practices.   

Q: How do you handle setting up programs like this without a Risk Management office, or with a one-person office?

A: (Marist) Infrastructure for Marist's Florence and Dublin programs are quite different, but both work well. While we have 4-5 full-time employees in Florence we only have one, 10-month a year, contract person in Dublin. Schools with smaller home offices and infrastructure would do well to lean on their partner(s) more heavily vs. if one could more fully staff all positions and assume broader responsibilities onsite. All colleges have some sort of risk manager, even the de-facto one if something were to go wrong. A conversation with a Provost would be a good place to start in terms of developing support for the idea.

(Mines) Mines does not have a Risk Management office and our Education Abroad staff is 2 people. While this is not ideal to initiate a new program, we work in close collaboration with many departments and delegate responsibilities where we can. In this type of situation, working with a third-party provider is extremely beneficial. Small offices need to get buy-in and support from other important departments on campus so they can delegate some responsibilities to others. For example: Admissions is charged with marketing, the application process, and the selection of the students. The registrar works with faculty to get courses approved and students registered on campus so financial aid can be dispersed. Academic Advising builds the course schedules and advises students. The third-party program provider manages the enrollment process, visa, and in-country logistics. This allows our small office to function primarily as the project manager to keep everything moving along. This said, there is a significant time commitment to build a new program and a first-year program, in particular, has a lot of complexity and moving parts. 

Q: Do you consider transfer students for the program as well, or strictly freshmen? What about non-traditional students?

A: (Mines) We focus primarily on first-year students since we have done course matching for this cohort. This said, we will allow other students in the program if they have not yet fulfilled the general requirements we offer in the program. Both of our cohorts, thus far, have included at least one student who is at a slightly higher level (first-semester Sophomore) because we were able to secure the necessary courses through the partner university. We have not yet encountered a non-traditional student but would be open to allowing participation.

Q: Do you think that First-Year experiences like this are popular due to low campus engagement due to COVID?

A: Both Mines and Marist enrolled students prior to the pandemic.  There is no evidence to show that the strong enrollment numbers were tied to the pandemic.  There may be a slight increase in interest this year, but demand was strong prior to the pandemic.  

How to contact CEA

Do you have more questions or want to continue the conversation? Read more about CEA's FYE Abroad programs and/or contact your Regional Director today!