Conference ProceedingBOARD # 221: A Re-imagined First-Year Engineering Program—FYE2.0Sorby, Sheryl; Asghar, Muhammad; Bucks, Gregory; Hill, Jeremy; Kastner, Jeff; Murphy, TJ; Reeping, DavidPurdue University established Freshman Engineering (now known as First-Year Engineering) in 1953, the first program in the U.S. to do so. Over the years, First-Year Engineering (FYE) programs have been established at several institutions, but not all, across the country. In the early 1990s, the National Science Foundation (NSF) provided funding for what were called the Engineering Education Coalitions. They funded a total of eight coalitions that involved more than 40 institutions of higher education over the period from 1990-2005. In addition, NSF created the Action Agenda program in the late 1990s aimed at individual institutions that wanted to adapt and adopt the findings from the existing Coalitions. A strong focus of the Coalitions was on introductory engineering courses, with the rationale that engineering was losing too many students through attrition, and we needed to pay more attention to their formative years. Nearly every Coalition created some version of an FYE program through this funding mechanism. The number of FYE programs across the nation has increased dramatically based on these investments, largely in response to curricular efforts aimed at retaining engineering students by providing them with meaningful career-oriented experiences early in their college educations. Many of these first-year programs were called “common first-year engineering programs,” meaning that all students enrolled in the same courses at the same time. It is a one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter approach to education. Despite the laudable goals espoused by most FYE programs, there has been an unintended consequence: curricular rigidity and inflexibility. Thus, students have little agency to shape their own pathway toward an engineering degree. Recently, the University of Cincinnati obtained a grant from the NSF to develop the next generation of first-year programs: FYE2.0. We envision a modularized program that will provide students with essential skills, while at the same time scaffold their first year with opportunities for customization and flexibility in charting their own engineering journey. This paper outlines the logistical progress made in implementing FYE2.0 to date and discusses plans for the future.American Society for Engineering Education-PEER2025-06-2210675654https://doi.org/2337003National Science Foundation