The first year is fragile. Belonging is what makes it stick

There’s a quiet fear that sits just beneath many conversations about international education and first‑year students. Is it too much too soon? Are we asking students who are still figuring out how to do laundry, manage deadlines, and find their people to also cross borders and cultures? And, more pressing still: does any of this actually help students succeed long term?

These questions followed me at the Annual Conference on the First Year Experience in Seattle as I found myself in rooms not typically filled with education abroad professionals. Surrounded by admissions leaders, faculty, advisors, and student affairs practitioners, I was very much in the minority as an international education practitioner. But that turned out to be a gift. It allowed me to listen closely to how the first year is being reimagined – and what that might mean for learning that happens beyond campus borders.

One thing was clear: the first year is no longer being thought of as a single program or checklist of initiatives. Instead, it’s increasingly described as an ecosystem. Not a constellation of loosely related efforts, but a living, breathing system where academic, social, and personal elements are deeply interconnected. Change one part, and everything else shifts too.

This framing matters. When we talk about ecosystems, we stop asking who “owns” the first year and start asking how different players work together. In my own work supporting US first‑year students at CEA CAPA Education Abroad, I see how powerful this mindset can be. First‑year learning, whether at home or abroad, works best when boundaries blur a little, when faculty, advisors, student support teams, and international staff are designing together rather than in parallel.

First‑year learning, whether at home or abroad, works best when boundaries blur a little, when faculty, advisors, student support teams, and international staff are designing together rather than in parallel

Another theme surfaced again and again in Seattle: belonging. Not as a nice‑to‑have, but as the foundation everything else rests on. We can design the most thoughtful curricula, layer in career exploration, and invest heavily in peer mentoring. But if students don’t feel connected – to each other, to their institution, to a sense of purpose – very little of it sticks.

The first year, arguably more than any other, sets the emotional tone for a student’s entire degree. It’s when they begin to ask: Do I fit here? Can I succeed? Is this place helping me become who I want to be? Belonging answers those questions before grades ever can.

Cultivating belonging starts early. It means creating environments where different students can see a future version of themselves thriving. It means intentionally building academic skills so progress feels cumulative rather than overwhelming. It means helping students connect classroom learning to bigger goals: careers, communities, a changing world. And, perhaps most importantly, it means nurturing curiosity, adaptability, and critical thinking: the human capacities that matter even more as automation and AI accelerate around us.

A few weeks ago in Nashville, at The Forum on Education Abroad’s annual conference, these ideas came full circle. In a conference presentation I co-led with colleagues from California Polytechnic State University and Colorado School of Mines, I had the opportunity to highlight the innovations of these two partners in the FYE abroad space. Using their programs as case studies, we evidenced how student-centric missions can be deliberately preserved as FYE Abroad programs answer wider institutional priorities–such as recruitment and retention–and how this requires a data-informed mindset to be persuasive.

As FYE Abroad programs grow, intentionality becomes the differentiator. Clear language, collaborative design, and data‑informed storytelling help ensure that the focus remains where it belongs: on what students actually need in their first year.

If the goal of the first year is to help students feel connected, capable, and confident, then every part of the ecosystem matters. Get belonging right early, and everything else has something solid to stand on.

About the author: Katie Cohen is the senior director of strategic global programs at CEA CAPA Education Abroad, where she leverages her extensive operational experience in study abroad to advance the organisation’s commitment to excellence and innovation in global education. Want to learn more about developing an FYE Abroad program with CEA CAPA? Visit our FYE Abroad website

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