First-year students at Kent State University at Stark build
steps at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore during a
Destination Kent State: First-Year Experience Summer
Service Project day.

An essential element to surviving your first year at college is support – from family, faculty and staff. Having peers to lean on also helps make the milestone transition easier.

Incoming Kent State University at Stark freshmen enroll in Destination Kent State: First-Year Experience (FYE) to familiarize themselves with college life. With topics ranging from responsibility to relationships and stress to studying, there is something to benefit each of them as they meet new friends who are embarking on the same exciting journey.

In addition to teaching skills that help students navigate their college years, Destination Kent State: First-Year Experience gives them the opportunity to positively impact others before they ever step into a classroom. Through its First-Year Experience summer service projects, Kent State Stark fosters community awareness by partnering with local organizations to improve the world in which we live.

First-year students at Kent State University at Stark
participate in a service project at the Habitat for Humanity
ReStore on a Destination Kent State: First-Year Experience
Summer Service Project day.

First-year students volunteer to spend a day enriching their education through experiences that reach far beyond their classrooms. Led by Kristi Yerian, Kent State Stark’s assistant director of First-Year Experience, four student groups participated in service projects this summer. Their duties included landscaping and painting along Stark Parks’ trailheads, sorting and packing donated cans and boxes of food at the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank and constructing window frames at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore.

Every service project begins with an ice breaker to introduce the students to those they will be working alongside. As they tackle tasks, making it possible for the community to enjoy the outdoors, feed a hungry child or afford a place to call home, many students build relationships with peers and staff members that provide the necessary support for a successful college career.

Click here to read a story from the Suburbanite.com about the students’ work volunteering with the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank.