Bates College First-Year Experience

First-Year Experience At-a-Glance
First-Year Experience At-a-Glance

The First-Year Experience at Bates is an award-winning collection of linked programs and resources intended to support first-year students as they transition to college, and transfer students as they transition to Bates. Rather than think of this transition simply as a 6-day “orientation” in late August, the First-Year Experience enables students to utilize their entire first year as an opportunity to explore academic interests, to build community, to gain a sense of place, to engage with the values of equity, inclusion, and access that are at the core of the Bates mission, and to do so while maintaining their health and wellness and defining their own individual sense of purpose and identity.

The First-Year Experience (FYE) is grounded in a set of clear values developed in community with students, faculty, and staff to align with the Bates College mission statement and the “Values and Aspirations” articulated in the 2016 Institutional Plan.

First-Year Experience Values

The First-Year Experience is comprised of a variety of programs that lay the foundation for your undergrad experience and ensures a smooth transition into the Bates Community.

It is guided by and grounded in values central to the Bates community that students will engage with throughout their first year at Bates. We have provided further explanation of these values below.

 

Drawing upon our roots as a community and college founded by Free-Will Abolitionists, our shared value of fostering belonging for all students requires a deep commitment to equity, inclusion, and access. This value grounds Bates’ efforts to ensure that all members of our community are equipped with the resources needed to attain their goals and to contribute to a community that supports all of its members.

Community is any collection of individuals who share a common set of values. Community is central to the student experience at Bates College. Students encounter it in their residence halls and classrooms, on athletic fields and in office spaces, on campus and beyond. Community is a fundamental point of intersection where all of the college’s values can be discussed, explored, respectfully considered, and renewed.

A residential liberal arts education is a model of academic exploration grounded in openness that deeply values encounters with the unexpected. It is possible only through engagement in community with others as well as through ardor and rigor on one’s own. It aspires to provide opportunities within and beyond the classroom so that students can develop holistically. Students can connect their questions, experiences, and interests not only across their classes, but also between their classes and their co-curricular exploration. The inquiry can be problem driven and emphasizes approaches from distinct perspectives, often recognizing that solutions come through cross-pollination of ideas and approaches.

Identity is created through relationships, life experiences, cultures, family, talents, and world views. And, identities can shift. How a student identifies in the classroom may be different than how they identify with a group of friends, how they identify in the dance studio or how they identify as an athlete; at Bates we honor complexity and encourage students to explore and embrace the many layers within themselves. Purpose is about a student’s “Why”. When we think about purpose at Bates, it is often in relationship to others: the impact we have on the people in our communities, the environment, and the wider world. The process of exploring who we are cultivates meaning in our life and brings us a sense of purpose.

At Bates we empower students to engage with their health from a values-based, intentional lens. Health and well-being is a multidimensional and lifelong practice for individuals that occur within the Bates community and the broader world. As such, we aim to equip students with the knowledge and skills to think critically about their experiences in order to advance and inform positive wellness decisions that are right for them.

A student’s college experience will be defined not only by people — the people you meet, befriend, and learn from — but also by place. One of the great things about attending a small residential college is that we all become connected to a new world filled with new places, many of which will wind up being deeply meaningful to you. These places will help shape your college experience, and sometimes even your future path in life.

 

First-Year Experience Components