Freshmen beginning their undergraduate education enter college with various backgrounds and expectations. Institutions seek to properly acclimate first-year students into this new transition. One way to help a first-year student transition into college is with a first-year program. First-year programs provide a unique space for students to adjust…

In November 2011, the author--Ivan Fuller, a professor of theatre and associate dean of the School of Fine and Performing Arts at Rider University--attended a joint symposium of the American Conference of Academic Deans and Phi Beta Kappa that was designed to wrestle with the question of why the humanities matter. At one session, participants…

The transition into college remains one of the most formative and complex phases in an individual's life. Institutions of higher learning have responded to the challenges facing first-year students in myriad ways, most often by offering summer orientation programs, dynamic living-learning environments, tailored academic and psychological support…

The term "assessment" sends shivers down academic spines. For faculty, it signals marching orders from external parties who may or may not appreciate the subtle and not always quantifiable value of faculty efforts. For administrators, it means the dual challenge of recalibrating internal measures to meet external mandates but also…

The history department at Fordham University in 1968 inaugurated a one semester course stressing a few historical areas in depth, deemphasizing breadth of knowledge and emphasizing historical methodology and historiography. (Editor)

A program for freshmen designed to release all the facets and forces in a work, and all the student's capacities to respond and learn is described by a former professor at Notre Dame. (Editor)

As early as 1993 James Madison University realized that a significant revision was necessary in its undergraduate core curriculum. A General Education Committee was formed which undertook a review and evaluation of 1352 objectives; the Committee produced and published a list of approximately 100 specific learning objectives. These learning…

The purpose of this research was to determine whether a study skills course would significantly affect the grades of participating students, and whether this course would significantly affect the attitudes towards college of participating students. Subjects were 44 freshmen. Groups of 22 students were formed using a matched pairs sampling…

Genesee Community College in Batavia, New York, adopted James Kinneavy's aims of discourse theory as the basis of its composition program. The program is a two-semester course for students who intend to transfer to four-year colleges. In a comparable nontransfer sequence, the first semester doubles as a remedial course for ill-prepared transfer…

CLIOTUTOR is a computer-assisted instructional package of 30 tutorial lessons keyed to a standard text and operated with a VAX computer system. Western Michigan University, a member of the CLIOTUTOR consortium, operates its own copy of the program in conjunction with a redesigned two-semester freshman history course. CLIOTUTOR provides a half-hour…

To introduce college students to the liberal arts, Castleton State College established the Soundings Program in fall 1985. The program was designed as a general education requirement for freshmen that earned one credit in each of the two semesters of the first year for attendance at (1) a limited number of required lectures and (2) eight elective…

A classification system for freshman courses that is useful as a planning tool and descriptive guide is presented and examples of analogous programs are described. Three approaches to freshman courses--interdisciplinary, developmental, and utilitarian--form a continuum, since many courses are derived from more than one philosophical base. The…

Individualization in freshman composition is necessitated not only by the individual differences of students but also by their varying writing competencies. (Editor)

This paper discusses theories and practices of the politics of curriculum reform tested while working to establish a freshman seminar course at the University of Prince Edward Island. The step-by-step procedure for negotiating the approval process is relevant to all types of curriculum reform. (Author/MLW)

This paper describes efforts by Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) to develop programs to serve the needs of first-year students, focusing on collaborative efforts across the university system to retain nontraditional and underrepresented students. The School of Liberal Arts Faculty Mentor Program links a first-year seminar…