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 expectations of first-year students are becoming more widely researched and understood. How to realign perceptions and prepare students for the transition from secondary school to tertiary education is less well considered. This paper presents an account of a pre-university preparation programme embedded in the senior years of secondary…

Developmental summer bridge programs are a popular strategy for increasing college readiness among recent high school graduates. Aimed at providing an alternative to traditional developmental education, these programs provide accelerated and focused learning opportunities in order to help students acquire the knowledge and skills needed for…

Research on student retention and transition in higher education has been an ongoing focus since the 1950s and during the past decade research into this area has gathered momentum as institutions of higher education increasingly recognise the economic and social costs of failing to retain and transition future graduates. Measures to improve…

Colleges and universities across the United States are struggling with student retention and attrition (Derby & Smith, 2004; Jacobs & Archie, 2008; Tinto, 1993). As a result, theoretically supported interventions designed to encourage retention and persistence are needed. The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to intentionally create…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe how and why Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ) has developed a system aiming to effectively place students in freshman and developmental English programs. The placement system includes: triangulating data from external test scores, with scores from a panel-marked hand-written essay (HWE),…

If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a strong network of committed colleagues to launch an initiative like "SENSE." From its conception in fall 2006 to the first national administration in fall 2009, the Survey of Entering Student Engagement ("SENSE") has been supported by key individuals and groups, without whom there would have been…

In 1974, the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia created the developmental studies program in response to a growing number of entering freshmen who were inadequately prepared for curricula assuming mastery of the basic skills. Early attempts to evaluate developmental programs in Georgia simply used standard survey techniques to…

A four-week summer program at Georgia State University prepares entering African-American students for college work through instruction in mathematics, reading, composition, study skills, word processing, tutoring, academic and career counseling, mentoring, and follow-up. The program has been well received and succeeded in enhancing retention.…

A profile is presented in this report of Project HELP (Higher Education Learning Package), a liberal arts instructional program alternative developed to assist high-risk, first-time community college students, with multiple deficiencies in reading, writing, and computational skills, to succeed and continue in college. Introductory material…

The Purdue University (Indiana) Department of Freshman Engineering offers a counselor-tutorial program to high-potential, but academically disadvantaged, freshmen. The program's counseling and tutorial services are intended to help students successfully complete their first-year courses in calculus, chemistry, and physics. Experience shows…

This document presents the program and proceedings of a national forum on new students with disabilities and includes abstracts of presentations by 22 institutions as well as specific conference information. The following institutions are represented: (1) Algonquin College (Ontario, Canada), (2) Austin Peay State University (Tennessee), (3)…

The Student Support Services Program, in the student affairs division, has been a counseling and tutorial program at Chicago State University since 1978. The program's goal is to increase the retention and graduation rates of the university's students. The program's focus is to monitor extensively each participant's first year at the university…

The Pre-College Summer Institute (PCSI) program has been in effect at the University of Hartford, College of Basic Studies, since the summer of 1968. PCSI was a five-week, five-days-a-week program designed to evaluate and prepare marginally acceptable students for the college's entering freshman class. Initially, the program was designed to…

In 1991, Bronx Community College, in New York, established the Freshman Year Initiative Program (FYIP), a comprehensive academic and counseling program designed to enhance academic achievement for a select group of first-semester students who require at least three remedial courses in English composition, reading, and/or mathematics. In order to…