Beach XP Program Surprises First-Year Students with Symbolic Caps, Inspiring Persistence in Their College Journey
First-year students in the Beach XP program were surprised during an end-of-semester presentation last month when each was presented with a small token for their hard work: a baseball cap, emblazoned with stately marks of “LB” and “Beach XP,” to cap off an impressive start to their college journey.
More than a simple memento, the hat symbolizes their decision to pursue higher education and dream big at Cal State Long Beach — a reminder of the graduation cap with which they’ll adorn themselves in a few short years.
“It’s planting the seed to persist in their college endeavors,” said Candice Chick, Director of Beach XP.
“A big symbol in higher education is the graduation cap, so we thought giving them each a Beach XP baseball cap would inspire them to honor the next hat they will earn.”
All roughly 1,300 Beach XP students were awarded caps during a week of classes in December. The giveaways were made possible through a generous donation by University Relations & Development, and continue a tradition of gifting each Beach XP student a commemorative item.
As a program focused on improving retention and persistence, Beach XP supports first-time college goers by ensuring they feel welcomed, engaged, and provided with the tools they need to thrive in their first semester at The Beach, and beyond.
Right away, students in Beach XP are introduced to others with whom they will one day walk across the commencement stage. They join a learning community of peers from their same college, so their academic goals and journey to graduation feel achievable and shared.
With smaller class sizes, more personalized connections with professors, and support navigating numerous campus resources, the program serves as a launching pad for their success, easing a seamless transition into college, then setting them up with the tools and confidence to persist in their academic journeys to graduation.
The ball cap was meant to recognize their hard-earned perseverance in this first chapter of their college experience, motivating them to keep that same steadfastness until their next hat is earned.
"We're a retention program,” Chick said, “and we're trying to create a legacy here at the beach, both for our institution as a whole, and for our individual students to succeed in their dreams and aspirations."
Early data on the effectiveness of Beach XP, which launched in fall 2023, show promising indicators that the program is, in fact, having a positive impact on first-year persistence. In addition to CSULB’s overall persistence rates being up, the 742 students who participated in Beach XP had higher persistence than their peers who did not participate.
Anecdotally, students, staff and faculty members who have participated in the program also note that friendships, connections, and student engagement have created a unique sense of community among those in Beach XP.
Bella Galoostian, a Beach XP Peer Mentor who participated in the program as a first-year student in 2023, said she was overjoyed at the friendships she saw had formed among students in the program when she and other peer mentors distributed the ball caps to various classrooms.
“Since it was at the end of the semester, I could finally see the students from the beginning to the end, and I could see that most of them were really together, they were really friends,” she said.
During the visit, peer mentors led an activity during which students were asked to write down on paper their favorite memory from their first semester at CSULB and pass it to a friend, who would read it aloud.
“Most students, when they read the memory that their friend wrote down, it was from a Beach XP class,” said Galoostian, who is double majoring in Child Development and Family Life Education. “It was a great moment of, like, oh I can see that it’s really working, and that they’re really together. The best memories they had this semester were in Beach XP classes.”
The symbolism of the ball caps resonated, too, she said. Conversations in the room turned to graduation and beyond, with students “optimistic” about the years ahead, she said.
To Galoostian, the hats were a physical reminder of the support that Beach XP offered in that crucial first semester of college.
“As a student, freshman year feels like a lot of pressure. It’s really demanding,” Galoostian said. “As a student who was in [Beach XP], it felt really supportive. Like, I’m gonna be ok. After my first semester in Beach XP, I was like, ‘oh, I can do this. I can get through college.’”
