Faculty development is a critical component to the success of any first-year seminar. This article explains the nationally recognized faculty development model of University 101 Programs at the University of South Carolina, including the philosophy behind why we do what we do, descriptions of the various initiatives, and best practices underlying…

This article explores the range and frequency of First-Year Writing students' emotional responses towards a project requiring multimodal composing and distribution of their work to an online public audience prior to and after completing the assignment. I analyzed the results using Driscoll and Powell's emotion categories (generative, disruptive,…

In seeking to close equity gaps within a first-year student seminar course, course designers leveraged emerging research on intrapersonal competency cultivation, known to significantly predict student success across diverse students (NAS, 2018). After re-designing the course to intentionally cultivate specific intrapersonal competencies,…

University educators struggle to provide effective assistance to students for the transition to college life (Center for Collegiate Mental Health, 2019). Like many other institutions, Florida State University, population 42,000, has grappled with how best to help students meet these challenges. In 2018, the university administration requested a…

First-Year Seminars (FYS) offer a unique mode of introducing college students to new topics, research practices, and approaches to learning that they may not have been exposed to in high school. In this article, we outline the successes and challenges of team teaching a combined cultural anthropology and biochemistry course on the topic of blood,…

The transition to college is a stressful time that can present many emotional challenges and demands. One way to help ease this transition is through the implementation of emotion regulation skills training in first-year experience courses. However, little is known about how students who receive such instruction implement emotion regulation, and…

This qualitative study was created to gain a better understanding of the impact of a for-credit first-year seminar course. Related existing research and theory included past studies on the first-year seminar, the hidden curriculum, and student persistence and retention. This study was intended to make an original contribution to the knowledge base…

First-Year Engineering (FYE) programs are a critical part of engineering education, yet they are quite complex settings. Given the importance and complexity of FYE programs, research to better understand student learning and inform design and assessment in FYE programs is imperative. Therefore, this dissertation showcases various uses of data…

This article focuses on the role of theory and assessment in shaping student services and support through collaboration between student and academic affairs. Specifically, this paper highlights the use of a first-year student assessment tool that informs student support practices in the College of Agriculture at Louisiana State University (LSU).…

Background/purpose: Cocurricular offerings should appropriately align with academic learning goals to ensure undergraduate students' development of professional dispositions that lead to civic and career success. This study provides a framework for implementing high impact practices into cocurricular instruction, as well as steps on how to align…

This study examined retention and First-Year GPA for all FTIC students, Black students, and Black Pell-eligible students at the UOTSE as a function of participation in a First-Year Seminar Course. A statistically significant relationship was determined to exist between First-year GPA and participation in the FYS course. For retention, participants…

This nonexperimental, longitudinal panel study was designed to test the predictive capacity of a grit intervention within a first-year seminar course that targeted academically underprepared students at a Mississippi community college. Extant pre- and post-grit scores for developmental students enrolled in the first-year seminar were analyzed for…

Persistence of first-year, full-time students toward graduation at U.S. community colleges poses concerns for administrators, faculty, and policymakers. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of faculty members teaching a college success seminar at an urban multicampus community college on what impedes or supports the persistence…

Using data from a learning module embedded in all first-year seminars, researchers found evidence suggesting that librarians are uniquely qualified to deliver information literacy instruction compared to campus faculty. The study analyzes writing assignments from first-year modules taught by either librarians or campus faculty for two academic…

This paper discusses the development and implementation of a locally-sourced corpus to address the specific needs of an ESL writing program. The paper begins with a description of the motivation and development of the "Corpus of Ohio Learner and Teacher English" (COLTE), a large in-house corpus consisting of assessed ESL student writing…