Researchers from the Pullias Center’s Promoting At-promise Student Success (PASS) team and University of Nebraska practitioners came together to present at the Annual Conference on the First-Year Experience (FYE) in Seattle. Each year, this conference brings together educators with a focus on supporting students through their transition into college and through their first year. The sessions were designed to share the research connected to direct practitioner work that our campus partners do, along with hands-on examples shared from the educators that stem from the research. Here are some highlights from our sessions.

Learning to Learn Better: First-Year, At-Promise Students’ Metacognition with Ralitsa Todorova, Jennifer Harvey (UNK), and Jennifer Johnson (UNO)

• Helping students understand how they learn can profoundly impact college success. This session highlighted findings about how students figured out effective learning strategies, knew to adapt when needed, and how their confidence, well-being, and emotional states influenced their learning. Our two practitioners shared key examples of how they help facilitate metacognitive strategies among first-year students, particularly through first-year seminars and one-on-one touch points. Practitioners shared resources, such as using a Commonplace Book (a centralized notebook that students reflect and take notes in across their courses), Clifton Strengths, and mid-term forms that have students evaluate their learning as ways of incorporating metacognitive strategies across multiple teaching moments.

Empowering Low-Income Students for Career Success Starting the First Year with Joseph Kitchen, Dusten Crichton (UNO) and Jennifer Harvey (UNK)

• Colleges and universities widely offer career support services, yet little is known about if or how such services work for low-income students, who make up a large share of today’s undergraduates. This session discussed how career supports can shape low-income students’ career development beginning in the first year,  drawing on the PASS project’s ten-year mixed-methods study of low-income college student career development conducted in partnership with university practitioners, We illustrated how proactive, coordinated, and relationally grounded supports — rather than transactional or cafeteria-style offerings — were effective modes of career development support for low-income students transitioning to college.

Leveraging Reflection to Improve Low-income Students’ Experiences in First-year Writing with Ralitsa Todorova, Jennifer Lambert (UNO) and Dusten Crichton (UNO)

• This session focused on a specific writing course at UNO, the Autobiographical Writing (Autobio) course that is a required course for students in the Thompson Learning Community (TLC). The Autobio course is an innovative approach to teaching writing that has improved low-income students’ academic outcomes and sense of belonging and is now being expanded across the whole campus, replacing the requirement for Composition I in English. Practitioners shared how the course has developed and grown over time, along with elements of how the course is taught. For example, Jennifer Lambert shared sample assignments, such as reading epistolary writing examples like Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things or a piece by Brenda Miller, Swerve, followed by students writing their own self-reflective piece.

Different Approaches to Support Belonging Among Low-income Students with Joseph Kitchen, Morganne Grutsch (UNO), Precious Loving-Afuh (UNL)

• Students from low-income backgrounds often face challenges in developing a sense of belonging on campus as they transition in their first year, with implications for their college success. Drawing from a longitudinal mixed methods study, we described a research-informed typology of belonging that educators can leverage to understand the different ways to support students’ sense of belonging on campus. The session introduced the belonging support typology and potential implications, described decision processes that practitioners could use as a heuristic to support students depending on where they fell within the typology, and practitioners offered specific engagement strategies to support the development of low-income students’ belonging. 

Additionally, our PASS practitioner partner Dusten Crichton (UNO) received a 2025-26 Outstanding First-Year Student Advocate award at the Annual Conference! This award highlights his commitment to supporting students’ access, belonging, and success on campus. Dusten was nominated by his colleagues, many of whom were at FYE to celebrate alongside him.