Key Features of Effective FYE Program

• Linked Courses that Create Cohorts & Contextualized Learning
• Collaborating Faculty
• Active Student-Centered Learning
• Strong Pro-Active Advising
• Emphasis on Student Success/Retention

“…change begins by sewing together the disparate parts of academic life into one whole fabric—albeit not new, but much improved” (Guarasci 17).

A first year seminar “should be linked to other courses in first-year learning community so that the activities that take place in the seminar are coherently connected to those that occur in the linked courses” (Tinto 6).

 “It is regrettable that too many institutions use the freshman seminar as a separate, stand-alone course unrelated to the academic life of the institution” (Tinto 6).

“The benefits for students are many (Tinto, 1997; Tinto, Engstrom, Hallock, and Riemer, 2001).  Students are more likely to form their own self-supporting groups that extend beyond the classroom, more likely to spend time together out of class than do students in traditional, stand-alone classes, and do so in ways that students see as supportive” (Tinto 5).

 “The challenge of profound curriculum reform was inescapable at Wagner.  Unlike many institutions that tinker with course offerings, we knew that the salvation of our college could come only through dramatic refocusing and revitalization of not just what we teach, but the way we teach” (Guarasci 14).

“Active learning would be the operative pedagogy” (Guarasci 16).

“Learning Communities do more, however, than simply co-register students around a topic.  In their fullest implementation, they also change the manner in which students are taught.  Faculty alter their teaching and their classrooms to promote shared, collaborative learning experiences among students across linked classrooms” (Tinto 5).

“Significant curriculum and institutional change does not require large additional sums of new funding…Change was funded first by reorganizing academic work (e.g. substituting reflective tutorials for English composition, etc.), freeing up resources and redeploying them to this key first-year program and all its cognates in academic support and the library” (Guarasci 18).

“Millions of dollars in net tuition revenue were realized by increasing student retention from freshman to sophomore year from high 60 percent levels to, ultimately, 90 percent (after 2003)” (Guarasci 18).

Works Cited

Richard Guarasci.“On the Challenge of Becoming the Good College.”  Liberal Education.  Winter 2006, pp. 14-21.

Vincent Tinto.“Taking Student Retention Seriously.” Annual Recruitment and Retention Conference, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.  Austen, Texas.  Retrieved May 11, 2006 from http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/fsd/c2006/docs/takingretentionseriously.pdf.