First-Year Orientation
Help Students Feel at Home From Day One
Orientation Programs • City Immersions • Team Building • Academic & Career Exploration
Make Orientation More Than a Campus Tour.
The best orientations do more than show students where things are. They help students build relationships, gain confidence, and feel a sense of belonging.
EdOdyssey partners with orientation and student success teams to add an experiential layer through city exploration, team building, academic and career connections, and shared experiences. Your team leads essential campus programming while we manage logistics and help students discover their new community.
Bring Orientation Beyond Campus
Designed Around Your Students, Campus & City
Help students connect with the place they’re going to college.
Students explore the neighborhoods, people, culture, history, and traditions that make their new community distinctive while building confidence beyond campus.
Place • Confidence • Belonging
Create shared experiences that bring students together.
Team challenges, small-group exploration, meals, and hands-on activities create natural opportunities to form relationships before routines and friend groups take shape.
People • Connection • Community
Connect college to what comes next.
Community leaders, alumni, professionals, and local organizations help students connect their interests and coursework to real-world opportunities and future career possibilities.
Purpose • Careers • Engagement
Campus to Community can operate as a semester- or year-long sequence, combining day trips with deeper weekend immersions and integrating with first-year seminars, learning communities, or existing launch programs.
Every Experience Has a Purpose
The EdOdyssey 4P Framework
Campus to Community experiences aren't simply field trips. Our 4P Framework creates intentional connections between the experience itself and the outcomes institutions want for their first-year students.
PEOPLE
Build meaningful relationships with peers and community.
PLACE
Use the surrounding community as a living classroom.
PERSPECTIVE
Build curiosity through experience, dialogue, and reflection.
PURPOSE
Connect experience to identity, academics, and the future.
What Could This Look Like?
Experiences Designed Around Your Campus & Region
Every Campus to Community program is built around the institution, its location, and its first-year goals. Programs can combine urban exploration, community engagement, cultural experiences, career connections, outdoor learning, and regional immersions.
BOSTON, MA | HISTORY, INNOVATION & COMMUNITY
Turn one of America’s great college cities into a living classroom through its neighborhoods, history, innovation economy, and community organizations. Students build confidence navigating the city while connecting with the people and places beyond campus.
Sample Experiences: Neighborhoods • History • Community organizations • Innovation & entrepreneurship • Alumni connections
CHICAGO, IL | CULTURE, COMMUNITY & THE CITY
Explore Chicago through the people and places that shape its identity, connecting students with local arts, music, neighborhoods, organizations, and leaders. Experiences help students understand a major American city while developing curiosity and a deeper connection to place.
Sample Experiences: Neighborhood immersion • Music & arts • Community leaders • Local organizations • Cultural exploration
BAY AREA, CA | INNOVATION, IDENTITY & IMPACT
Explore the intersection of innovation, culture, community, and social change across the Bay Area. Students engage with local organizations, professionals, and neighborhoods while examining the opportunities and challenges shaping one of the country’s most dynamic regions.
Sample Experiences: San Francisco exploration • Innovation & entrepreneurship • Community organizations • Alumni & professionals • Social impact
NEW YORK, NY | HISTORY, NATURE & CONNECTION
Leave the city behind for a weekend of history, outdoor exploration, and community-building in the Catskills and Hudson Valley. Explore Woodstock’s legacy, connect through hiking or yoga, experience the Hudson River, and discover sustainable food and agriculture at Stone Barns Center.
Sample Experiences: Bethel Woods & Woodstock history • Guided hike or group yoga • Walkway Over the Hudson • Stone Barns farm & culinary experience • Group reflection
More Experience. Less Operational Lift.
We Handle the Logistics So Your Team Can Focus on Students.
Campus to Community is designed to add capacity without turning your team into trip planners. EdOdyssey can manage the program from design through delivery, including transportation and vendors, trained Program Leaders, student communications, health and safety, on-program support, and post-program evaluation.
PROGRAM DESIGN
LOGISTICS & TRANSPORTATION
TRAINED PROGRAM LEADERS
HEALTH & SAFETY
STUDENT COMMUNICATION
EVALUATION
& IMPACT
Your team sets the goals. EdOdyssey helps bring them to life.
Northeastern Case Study
See a First-Year Experience in Action
EdOdyssey partners with Northeastern University to design and deliver experiential programs that connect hundreds of first-year students to New York City, its local communities, and one another.
94%
built meaningful peer connections
100%
would recommend a day trip or a weekend excursion
100%
felt more connected to their city
97%
engaged with new people, places, or perspectives
Data from Northeastern University’s 2026 post-program evaluations
“EdOdyssey elevates our FYE in so many ways. Their team is exceptional.”
Dr. Shannon Fairley-Pittman | Director, Global Network First-Year Programs | Northeastern University
Let's Design Your Campus to Community Program
Whether you want to strengthen an existing first-year program, deepen connections to your surrounding community, or create shared experiences for an entire incoming class, we’ll design a model around your students, goals, location, calendar, and budget.
Start with a pilot or scale across your program. We’ll bring the experiential design and operational capacity to make it work.
Have a different first-year challenge you're trying to solve?