SOURCE
Vol 9
For College Transitions
No. 2 March 2012
A biannual publication from the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience® and Students in Transition
CONTENTS
1
Attracting and Retaining First-Year Seminar Faculty Saint Joseph College has developed four key strategies to attract and retain first-year seminar faculty.
4
UStart: A Peer-Designed and Led Orientation Initiative Australia’s University of Wollongong uses a student-designed and facilitated orientation program to welcome the new, entering cohort.
7
Common Read Impact Reaches Campus and Community A common reading program has far-reaching influences on enhanced learning and student engagement at South Dakota State University.
10
First-Year Initiatives in a Residential Program An innovative residential initiative at Angelo State University has a positive impact on student retention rates.
15
Resource Spotlight: The Successful First-Year Seminar: What’s Learning Style Got to Do With It? Central Connecticut University uses the 4MAT learning styles model to improve the acquisition of knowledge and reading, writing, and comprehension skills in an academic first-year seminar.
18
Colleague Spotlight: How Effective are High-Impact Practices? This article presents highlights from a recent ASHE symposium with several prominent colleagues in the field discussing high-impact practices.
Attracting and Retaining First-Year Seminar Faculty Attracting faculty, especially tenured, senior Karen F. Palmunen faculty, to the first-year seminar (FYS) classroom Director, First-Year Seminar is not always an easy task. Some faculty memProgram bers, preferring the greater depth of academic Associate Professor of French discussion possible in upper-level courses, might Saint Joseph College West Hartford, CT hesitate to work with first-year students. Some, lacking pedagogical training, may avoid the exploration of learning style or creative teaching strategies that FYS programs encourage. Others could resist discussion of transition issues, such as homesickness or conflict management, claiming they are not trained psychologists. Still others, preferring total control over the courses they teach, may not be comfortable working with an FYS team. Finally, overworked faculty could find the individual and institutional rewards of teaching FYS inadequate. Saint Joseph College (SJC) has confronted all these challenges over the nine years of its FYS program and has overcome them by developing successful strategies for attracting and retaining faculty. SJC is an undergraduate (women’s) and graduate (co-educational) liberal arts college whose first-year class averages 200 students. The first-year seminar is a threecredit course required of all entering students during their first semester. The dual purpose of FYS is to help students with both academic and social or emotional transitions to college and to emphasize critical thinking, reading, and writing. Photo courtesy of USC Creative Services. There are 13 sections with an average class size of 15-16 students. Two thirds of the instructors are full-time faculty, as is the director, and the remainder are staff primarily from the Center for Academic Excellence. Each class is assigned a peer mentor who serves as a resource for first-year students and creates a link between curricular and cocurricular activities and student and instructor. Every section receives $100 for course enrichment, and there is also a $1,000 pool for special events. SJC employs the following four strategies to attract and retain FYS faculty: (a) voice and choice; (b) FYS training with peer mentors and Student Services representatives; (c) respect and institutional rewards; and (d) consistent, effective assessment. Continue to FACULTY DEV, p. 2 >>