The Trail Head-First-Year Experience

Program Goals

The First-Year Experience is designed to meet the following goals:

• To provide a bridge between the high school experience and the Bethany experience to provide students resources to engage actively with the campus and community
• To provide resources to explore self-identity and personal growth in the context of the college experience and to demonstrate an appreciation for physical, mental, emotional, intellectual, and financial well-being
• To improve college-level writing, communication, research, and critical thinking skills in the context of both a focused subject area and the broader liberal arts with a faculty mentor and guide.

Students will:

• explore identity development, including personal and professional identification
• employ and enhance college-level academic skills through a topic-driven learning experience
• work as a professional learning community to better the campus or community through a service learning project

• develop an appreciation for and demonstrate areas of personal health and wellness 

• increase awareness and knowledge of and utilize available Bethany staff and resources and informational technology

• familiarize themselves with the history and importance of the liberal arts traditions

All students who meet one of the following conditions are required to complete successfully the First-Year Experience, including BFYE 110, 111, and 112 or HSEM 101 and 102.

• The student has graduated from high school but never attended college, even if she or he has completed college credits while in high school.
• The student has enrolled in another college and is transferring fewer than 13 credits to Bethany.

Students who have been enrolled as a full-time, degree-seeking student at another institution and who have completed 12 or more credit hours at that institution are considered transfers and are exempt from the Bethany First-Year Experience (BFYE) requirement.

Further information on the BFYE courses can be found in the First-Year Experience section. Note on Completions: Students who do not successfully complete their first year seminar in the fall term will be required to make up this course during the next calendar offering of the course, usually the subsequent spring semester. Students who do not successfully complete BFYE 102 will be required to register for, and successfully complete the course during its next offering. If these courses are not successfully completed, students will not be eligible for graduation.