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The First-Year Experience Course at the Community College:
Promise & Potential for Promoting Successful Student Transfer
Joe Cuseo
jcuseo@earthlink.net
The first-year experience course at community colleges not only has the potential to facilitate the
student transition to college; it can also promote student transition from 2-year to 4-year
institutions and achievement of a baccalaureate degree—particularly if the course involves
academic advising and educational planning as a core component. For example, at Marymount
College (CA), a 2-year institution, all incoming students take a first-year experience course that
includes an assignment (carrying significant point value), which requires them to meet with their
academic advisor during the first 4-6 weeks of their first term to develop an educational plan,
encompassing general education requirements for the associate degree (A.A. or A.S.) and pre-
major requirements for their intended field of specialization. Extra-credit assignments are also
used to create incentives for students to participate in, and reflect on transfer workshops offered
on campus, including an annual “transfer fair” in which admissions representatives and transfer
advisors from 4-year institutions are brought to campus (Cuseo, 2003). Similarly, at Cloud
County Community College (Kansas), all first-time, full-time freshmen enroll in a first-year
experience course that requires them to meet with their academic advisor at least four times
during their first two months on campus. In addition to promoting students’ social integration
and use of effective learning strategies, these course-integrated advising sessions introduce
students to transfer requirements and engage them in transfer planning (Coppoc, 2012).
First-year experience courses at community colleges also have the potential to elevate the
educational aspirations of students who are initially undecided about transferring to a 4-year
institution, or students whose initial goal may be a vocational/technical certificate or a terminal
associate degree. It is reasonable to expect that the educational aspirations of both these types of
students may be elevated by their participation in a first-year experience course that addresses
such topics as: (a) building academic skills and self-confidence, (b) learning how to learn, (c)
motivation and goal setting, (d) connecting general education with academic or career
specialization, and (e) comparing the advantages of a baccalaureate versus an associate degree or
vocational certification. Furthermore, if vocationally-oriented and transfer-oriented
(baccalaureate-seeking) community college students are grouped together in the same sections of
a first-year experience course, interactions between these students may elevate the educational
aspirations of those students whose initial plan is to discontinue postsecondary education after
completing a certificate or associate degree.
When support for aspiring transfer students is centered in the curriculum and delivered through
a first-year experience course that requires and rewards students to engage in meaningful transfer
planning, two potent principles of effective program delivery are implemented simultaneously:
proactive delivery and intrusive delivery. Proactive and intrusive support for students in their
first term of college may also be expected to impact their level of involvement with advising-
related resources during their remaining years in college, enabling these resources to exert
recurrent and cumulative effects throughout the undergraduate experience.
The practice of offering programmatic support in the form of a graded, credit-bearing course
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also has the advantage of promoting the advising program’s credibility in the eyes of students.
The program’s content is more likely to be seen as central to a college education and comparable
in importance to content covered in other courses that comprise the college curriculum. The
challenge to getting first-year students to make more effective use of support services is to have
them view these services as a normal component of their college education and integral to their
success, rather than as a something supplemental to their college experience and an admission of
weakness. “Colleges can address this challenge by making engagement strategies and support
services inescapable, either by integrating them into the classroom experience, making them
mandatory, or otherwise bringing them to students” (Center for Community College Student
Engagement, 2008, p. 4). One way to accomplish this is by integrating student use of campus
support services, such as academic advising, into the first-year experienced course as a credit-
earning course assignment.
Furthermore, when advising-program support is delivered through a course in the curriculum,
the course grade can serve as a strong motivational incentive that elevates students’ level of
effort and depth of involvement with respect to the program’s content. This serves to magnify the
advising program’s potential for exerting positive effects on successful student transfer.
The power of this effect may be magnified further if advisors actually serve as instructor for first-
year experience courses. According to the 2009 national survey conducted by the National Resource
Center for The First-Year Experience (Padgett & Keup, 2011), almost one-third of all institutions
offering first-year experience courses intentionally place students in sections taught by their
academic advisors. If academic advisors serve as first-year experience instructors, the course can
serve as a vehicle for ensuring that students have close and continuous contact with a key academic-
support agent during the critical first term of the college experience. Research conducted at North
Dakota State University indicates that when new students’ academic advisors also serve as their
FYE course instructors, these students have significantly more out-of-class contact with their
academic advisor during their first term than students whose advisors do not co-serve as their FYE
instructor (Soldner, 1998).
(References available upon request by contacting Joe Cuseo at: jcuseo@earthlink.net)