University expands first-year program after successful debut
Lanaya Terrell was nervous leaving her hometown of Sacramento for college at Cal State Long Beach, where she didn’t know anyone and heard it could be tough to get all the classes she wanted.
So, the aspiring elementary school teacher joined Beach XP, a program the university had just launched to help first-year students like her transition into and stay in college.
Through the program, Terrell quickly forged strong relationships with an academic advisor and peer mentor, learned about campus resources like the student health clinic, and took most of her classes with the same cohort of students — students going through the same things she was.
Now in her second year at the university, Terrell is thriving, confident in the academic path she chose and serving as a student ambassador in the College of Education.
“That’s one of the best decisions I ever made,” Terrell said of joining Beach XP. “I love this program.”
The university is also seeing positive results out of the first year of Beach XP and so is looking to expand its reach.
The percentage of first-year students making it to their second year at Ӱ rose from 84.6 percent in 2022 to 86.2 percent in 2023, reversing a downward trend. Ӱ in Beach XP saw even better gains, with 87.5 percent persisting compared to 86 percent of students not in the program.
In the College of Education where Terrell is in the Liberal Studies program, the persistence rate among Beach XP participants was 86.8 percent compared to 85.3 percent among non-participants.
Hoping to boost those numbers even more, the university doubled enrollment in Beach XP this year to about 1,300 students, wants to grow it to 3,000 next year, and is devising ways to better reach students where they are through other means of outreach, such as podcasts and more virtual offerings.
“The higher the population, the bigger the impact we’re going to make,” said Candice Chick, director of Beach XP.
MORE ONLINE: Read the full Beach XP report
MAKING COLLEGE ENJOYABLE
Ӱ introduced Beach XP last academic year to reverse declining persistence rates attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic. The drops were particularly acute among male students, male students of color and Long Beach College Promise students, many of whom are first-generation college students and come from underserved communities.
There were 742 students in Beach XP in 2023-24, or about 13 percent of all first-year students.
Each college at Ӱ designs its own Beach XP program. In the College of Education, participants engage in community-building activities, pair up with a peer mentor, work with advisors to select an academic pathway and learn about campus services.
The College of Ed has two 20-student cohorts of Beach XP students. The program is led by Liberal Studies Academic Advisor Hedrick Flores, who benefited from a similar program when he was a first-year student at Cal State Dominguez Hills.
In designing his program, Flores thought back to his experience as a bus-dependent commuter student who couldn’t participate in a lot of extracurricular activities because they were held late in the day, and he didn’t have the time or resources to join. So, for example, he schedules Beach XP activities during times students are already on campus.
“I don’t want students to feel alone. I don’t want them to feel afraid. I want them to enjoy college,” Flores said. “My thing is, ‘I hope I can give you a good first year so that you can make your second, third and fourth years whatever you want them to be.’”
One of his big focuses is bringing resources to the students. He invites to a weekly Beach XP class representatives from places like Counseling and Psychological Services and the University Learning Center to talk about what they have to offer.
Flores also checks in with students about their grades and provides support if needed. Some Beach XP students had high school teachers who let performance slide during the pandemic and now have professors who don't give that same leeway.
Flores says he’s aware students can be intimated approaching professors or other authority figures, so he aims to be a person with whom students feel comfortable sharing their questions or concerns.
“I know sometimes students have a fear of talking to people who are, quote-unquote, more adult,” Flores said. “Every professor has a different style of teaching. I'm just more mellow. I’m not like an authoritative person.”
NARROWING EQUITY GAPS
Early data indicate male students particularly benefited from Beach XP. Persistence rates among Black and Latino male students in the program were higher in 2023 compared to both the overall campus figures and non-Beach XP students in these respective groups. And in a promising sign of a narrowing equity gap, the overall persistence rate for males on campus hit 85.8 percent in 2023, lagging less than one percentage point behind female persistence rates — the slimmest margin in recent years.
While the program saw strong persistence among Black male students, with only 11 enrolled, the rate is not statistically significant. Still, it serves as a promising indicator of the efficacy of the Beach XP program in supporting historically underserved populations.
“Our future plans include strategies to engage more Black males in the program and to continue to monitor their success rates compared to other demographic groups and previous cohorts,” Chick said.
Another bright spot in the report, she said, was that 88 percent of the 68 Long Beach Promise students in Beach XP made it to their second year, a historic high for this group. Long Beach Promise students make up about 10 percent of all Ӱ students.
EXPLORING NEW MODELS
The university wants to expand Beach XP to reach about half of all first-time, first-year students. While current challenges such as limited staff and resources present obstacles, colleges are exploring new models to reach more students with existing resources.
Auto-enrolling students from certain majors, offering online content in addition to in-person activities and integrating learning outcomes into introductory course curriculum represent some ideas to grow the program.
It is also developing a podcast to get information out to students, especially commuter ones, and gamifying learning activities to boost engagement.
“We’re trying to provide both in-person and remote modalities to really meet students where they are,” Chick said. “If the colleges want to meet with all their students every single week, that's fine, too. We support that. But we're trying to think outside the box, give them the bandwidth to run a program on a higher scale, meaning reach more students.”
Chick is particularly excited to see how the College of Education’s Beach XP students do in the future because they can take what they learn and apply it to their own classrooms and schools.
“It’s exciting to know that they are seeing first-hand how learning communities, how creating a sense of belonging, can make an impact on a huge college, and then can do it in the spaces where they become professionals,” she said. “They can make a legacy that is even bigger than what is happening at this campus.”
