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Abstract: UniSA has introduced a common first year program for all of its undergraduate engineering degrees from 2008. The common first year program aims to provide students with a foundation in multidisciplinary areas of engineering. To a large extent it is a strategic response to increasing competition for local and international students. A key element of the common first year program is to engage students in professional practice right from the beginning. The new program provides opportunity for students demonstrating high performance in the first year to pursue an accelerated three-year pathway to degree completion. This will reduce cost to students, shorten the time to market graduates and potentially assist in overcoming the shortage of engineers. A team-based approach has been adopted across UniSA’s Division of IT, Engineering and the Environment for developing teaching and learning and student support strategies in the common first year. This paper presents some of these strategies and the initial experience gained, as there appears to be a great deal of interest about the first year engineering programs in Australian Universities