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Meeting Minutes

October 4, 2005

Several items of business were discussed prior to the first presentation on the Freshman Experience. Suggestions were requested for publicizing the October 28 open forum. These included the AppScene, the campusinfo list serve for faculty, e-mailing Chairs, the SGA, Student Development, The Appalachian, and the Dean’s Council.

Small faculty discussion groups were suggested as another means of opening up dialogue on general education. The Hubbard Center is willing to help arrange these. Volunteers for these groups included Jim Barnes, Tim Harris, Sammye Sigmann, Paul Gates, Greg Rhoads, Doris Jenkins, and Alexandra Hellenbrand. Their schedules will be solicited.

It was announced that the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges & Universities will be in January in Washington D.C. Dan Friedman will be presenting a paper there. Others expressed interest in attending. The Chair will pursue travel funds.

It was announced that Sammye Sigmann had posted the Task Force calendar on the Web CT site for Task Force members. Also posted are the power point presentations submitted by presenters at Task Force meetings.

Presentation: The First Year Experience

Dan Friedman, Director, Freshman Seminar, and Joni Petschauer, Director, Learning Communities.

Learning communities are created in order to foster relationships that support educational success. 86% of first semester freshmen are involved in intentional communities at ASU. The Honors program has 125 freshmen living together and taking classes together in East Hall. Summer Preview takes 119 freshmen and involves them with peer leaders, mentors, and faculty. Watauga College is a highly developed learning community.

There are 1530 students in freshman learning communities on campus this fall. These link students in two courses (an anchor course such as Freshman Seminar and a core curriculum/major course) and provide an academic advisor. A peer leader may also be assigned to Freshman Seminar. Freshman Seminar and English classes are often combined. There is a Freshman Seminar taught in Spanish and linked with a Spanish class. There are 73 learning communities covering 34 different courses.

Assessment indicates that retention is higher for freshmen who have been integrated through learning communities (86% vs. 82%). Integration of the learning community doesn’t work as well when the students are just a segment of a larger class. Sometimes, integration works too well and students talk too much to one another because they know each other so well.

What works well? Freshman Seminar prepares faculty for the learning community approach. Faculty members benefit from working together across courses. Connecting the academic advisors to the students is important. There are a variety of models one can use and flexibility is important. Regular assessment helps.

What needs to change? Part-time faculty contracts are not awarded until it is too late to incorporate them in the learning communities. The reward structure needs to be better connected in order to attract faculty (importance in promotion and tenure). It is hard to enroll students in learning cohorts, i.e. scheduling nightmare.

Students in learning communities form a group of friends that tends to last to graduation and beyond. If they feel a part of a community, they are willing to take risks and voice opinions.

Freshman Seminar is “active learning” in which students are given the tools to find their way in college. Students who take Freshman Seminar tend to be a little bit more plugged in, and are outperforming other upperclassmen after they take Freshman Seminar. Students who take Freshman Seminar are more likely retained. This program brings prestige to ASU; people come to us to ask what is working.

There are problems. Only 21% of the Freshman Seminar instructors are fulltime tenure-track faculty. How can more be recruited?

Faculty development for Freshman Seminar is very important. They go through a five day training session and are paid a stipend.

Students are sometimes bored with learning the tools in the course although often they come back later to say it was helpful. We talk about the importance of a liberal education in Freshman Seminar. Text is New Connections (Friedman and Brantz).

The goals of Freshman Seminar are intellectual, building community, managing transition to college, personal development, cultural opportunities and learning about th resources at ASU.

There are 63 sections taught by 55 faculty. There is some variety in how the course is taught. Students are expected to read the summer reading program book. The course has Designators of W, CD, C.

Small groups are valuable. The FS class size of 24 is large for a seminar.
Students learn how to trust one another.

Departments are provided backfill money to replace the faculty member and the department gets to count the student credit hours earned in Freshman Seminar plus the replacement class.

Question: What would happen if this were required of all freshmen, and to some extent, transfers?
Then, you would have students in the class that don’t want to be there and not interested.

Question: Aren’t FS that encourage conversation theme-based? We should be as creative as possible in looking at all models. One size doesn’t fit all but all freshmen should be in some kind of intentional community.

Question: Wouldn’t faculty be more easily recruited to teach topical seminars in areas of their expertise? There are topical FS now in Honors.

Question: How can we change the reward structure to get departments and Deans to buy into FS? This is about changing the mindset of the institution.

Quick change could be made in general education on our campus using Freshman Seminar. There is a big budget there already.