Peer mentoring has shown beneficial effects in facilitating academic and social integration among first-year students in higher education. Previous research is, however, limited by the exclusion of a comparison group, to examine whether the integration process still occurs among non-mentored students, independently of peer mentoring. By using…

Outdoor orientation programs (OOPs) use wilderness or adventure experiences as a transition of incoming first-year students to college and university settings. We explored resilience and flourishing outcomes from two OOP trips in Virginia and North Carolina using the Brief Resilience Scale, the Mental Health Continuum Short Form, and a thematic…

Despite their aim to foster belongingness, a small percentage of incoming college students (1%-2%) report feeling excluded (not belonging) during their outdoor orientation program. Feelings of exclusion are often highly consequential to a person transitioning to college. This study explores the experiences of students reporting low levels of…

The current study examines if participants completing an early online academic orientation display significantly higher levels of achievement in anatomy and physiology (A&P) compared to those who do not complete this orientation. The study involves a sample of first year nursing students in a private Catholic college in a major midwestern city…

The transformation of higher education practices needs to be accompanied by the deployment of university guidance. This is especially important when activities have to be carried online and remotely. Online students expect to receive precise information to be successful learners, just as they would if they were in a face-to-face setting, but even…

Retention for online learners is declining so much that higher education institutions are graduating more learners than they are enrolling. The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to find ways to improve retention for first-term non-traditional learners in an online undergraduate program. Fourteen non-traditional learners participated in the…

The COVID-19 pandemic that began in March 2020 gave rise to a number of challenges for first-year experience activities at universities globally. One of the key challenges was the process of onboarding first-year students through an orientation programme that could not take place face-to-face as per the norm. In 2021, the first-year orientation at…

Purpose: Peer mentoring programs in higher education settings support incoming students in their transition and adaptation to college life. Mentoring program evaluation research primarily focuses on student outcomes and documents mentoring relationship quality (MRQ) as an important component of programs that facilitate change. The current study…

This article relays the author's experiences and lessons learned after she was selected to serve as the faculty coordinator for first-year student scheduling at her institution. The new assignment to run the first-year scheduling function in the summer was supposed to be a way to do something interesting and engaging in the summer. It turned out…

Many new students are struggling to succeed in the current college environment. The mental health crisis and the pandemic have only increased this struggle. Communication centers should partner with student orientation in order to increase student retention, alongside familiarizing students with the communication center from the beginning of their…

Whereas many college freshmen succeed during their first year, some struggle with transitioning. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive generic study was to examine the difficulties some high school graduates experience adapting to the college social environment. First-year college students often have feelings of homesickness, isolation,…

The first year at university is critical to students' later academic development. The first year, however, is also the time when students are most vulnerable to disengagement and dropout. Therefore, identifying students most at risk of disengagement as well as the classroom environment factors that drive or undermine student classroom engagement…

Freshman orientation programs are essential in facilitating the successful transition of high school students to college. At Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), these programs have become essential for supporting and advising students as they begin their academic journey. However, the extent to which faculty members of freshman…

To shed light on how first-year (FY) experiences affect student well-being, the current study used Saks and Gruman's (2018) socialization resources theory to examine the mediating effect of student course engagement on the relationship between FY onboarding usefulness perceptions and changes in student satisfaction and depression. Additionally,…

This study examined an intervention designed to improve sense of belongingness for new students at a medium-sized, four-year, public university in the Eastern United States. A randomized controlled trial was used to assess the impact of The Connection Project, a novel, 9-session intervention in a sample of 128 first-year students (77 treatment, 48…