Ivan (pseudonym), the son of Mexican migrant farmworkers, rarely spent more than six months in the same school and by high school was still classified as an English language learner. This article traces Ivan's experiences as a language learner and writer, telling his story in his own words through his writing and ethnographic data collected during…

First-Year Seminars (FYS) are among the high-impact practices described by AAC&U. We studied the long-standing First-Year Seminar Program at our public research university for the ways in which writing assignments--individualized for each seminar--help faculty and students achieve program objectives in critical and analytical thinking, the…

This article describes a three-year study assessing change in critical thinking demonstrated in essays written for regular class assignments. A rubric was designed and scorers trained to assess critical thinking holistically without knowledge of the writing prompt or author's status. The longitudinal improvement in scores earned by freshmen over…

This dissertation reports on a study investigating the identity of first-year university students as writers. The longitudinal project explored how students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds construct their identities as undergraduates and as academic writers in their first year. The research was qualitative and interpretative, and used…

The California State University (CSU) requires entering freshmen to be proficient in English reading and writing, as demonstrated on proficiency measures. Currently, approximately 46 percent of incoming college freshmen need remediation in English reading and writing. To assist these students, CSU instituted an Early Assessment Program (EAP),…

While the library is at the center of many campuses physically, it is often an overlooked and underused resource in improving the learning and success of first-year college students. Librarians, classroom faculty, administrators, and higher education researchers come together to explore the potential of the library in shaping the student…