Across the nation, troves of college students disenroll prior to graduation; students who do graduate often leave campus still searching as if something is missing, inadequate, and deficient. Indeed, something is missing and unsustainable in this malaise. Drawing on Tia Brown McNair, "et al." (2016), who call for student-ready campus…

Attention to the origins, history, and evolution of the First-Year Experience (FYE) movement in American higher education can inform institutional practices aimed at enhancing transition experiences of students.

First-year students taking developmental courses need the kind of guidance a freshman seminar can provide when the advice is directly relevant to their progress. An alternative to assigning a heterogeneous group of students to an academic advisor is to offer a course which enriches the key elements of a freshman seminar while applying the standard…

A freshman seminar offered at a women's college includes activities designed to enhance individual academic responsibility by assessing academic goals and evaluating progress toward them. Faculty advisor evaluation and student evaluation of the course indicate its usefulness. The exercises can be used in any developmental academic advisor-advisee…

An interview with David Riesman, founder of Harvard University's (Massachusetts) freshman seminar program, covers the origins and structure of the seminars, Riesman's own college experience, the importance of the college experience, faculty research, and the role of faculty in student intellectual development. (MSE)

Examines ways in which colleges and universities have attempted to integrate the curriculum and deepen students' involvement in learning, including first-year programs, learning communities, inquiry-based learning, integrative general education, and efforts to connect general education to majors and apply what has been learned from cognitive…

Traditional views of critical thinking instruction focus on teaching students to develop skeptical responses to the texts they read. Genuinely powerful and generative forms of critical thinking, however, require students to read creatively as well. To balance the rigor of analysis and exorbitance of creativity, a freshman honors seminar was…

Argues that freshman seminar class reunions increase the benefits of freshman seminars for urban commuter college students, and reports results of a study testing effectiveness of class reunions in reducing attrition for high-risk students (n=40). Findings support hypothesis that freshmen seminar groups with class reunions show greater student…

This report provides a conceptual framework for guiding decisions regarding the administrative delivery and course content of the freshman orientation seminar. The proposed framework relies heavily on empirical evidence generated by college-level research in the areas of student retention, student learning and academic achievement, and student…