The 2024 event is over. Stay tuned for future events.

Focus on the First-Year (2024)

A Regional Conference on the First-Year College Experience
Monday, May 13, 2024, 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Conference Program

Keynote Speaker

Jillian Kinzie 
Associate Director
Center for Postsecondary Research and the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) Institute
Indiana University School of Education

Presenting insights from the recent Re-imagining the First-Year of College Initiative and the latest research in student success and particularly as it relates to the first year of college.  Jillian is also a co-editor of Radical Re-Imagining for Student Success in Higher Education (2023), as well as the author and editor of numerous publications on student success. The Conference will also feature concurrent presentations and workshops from regional colleagues.

About the Conference

In 2023, the FYE crew at Southern was looking for a way to connect with local FYE colleagues at Connecticut colleges and universities.  We were in touch with some friends, but we knew there were many more out there who were building or re-imagining FYE programs, and we wanted to hear from them.

So, we did what all good educators do, we asked for some money to host them by writing a Faculty Development Grant.  Luckily, it was granted, and we sent out emails. To our surprise, we ended up welcoming over 70 colleagues from 20 Connecticut colleges and universities, as well as friends from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, and New Jersey.

We were able to offer 16 exciting presentations and workshops from colleagues at seven different institutions, including public and private universities, as well as the community college, on topics that included in and out-of-classroom experiences, practices, initiatives, and ideas related to supporting and educating first-year students.

The diversity of our presenters and attendees reflected the core of our FYE program at Southern, which we built with the intention of finding a way to include everyone who wanted to be included – including faculty and student affairs professionals; enrollment management administrators, and Academic Advisors, as well as students, and others.

For us, the experience was powerful. We learned a lot, laughed some, and truly enjoyed every conversation. For this reason, we knew we had to make this an annual thing.

We also learned, in 2023, that the conference organizers were spending nearly all of their time attempting to use the Hi-flex technology so that some colleagues could attend remotely, and that, even after all the time spent, it was glitchy. For this reason, we decided to move fully on-ground for 2024. I guess you could say that like our first-year students, we just want to be face-to-face again while learning from each other.

Contact

For more information, contact us.

Nicole Henderson
Director of the First-Year Experience
Professor of English

Dyan Robinson
Associate Director of the First-Year Experience