Matt Kiernan

To improve the low university graduation and retention rate, CCSU is narrowing its attention to first-year experience courses with the hope expanding them is a step in the right direction so that students may survive the next three to five years.

University President Dr. Jack Miller explained that the administration must focus on first-year experience courses to ensure that new students remain students. As of the 2008- 2009 numbers by the office of institutional research and assessment, CCSU’s six-year graduation and retention rate is 46 percent.

Faculty and administrators of the four CSU system universities came together for a lecture and workshop directed by John N. Gardner Institute of North Carolina Vice President Dr. Betsy Barefoot to improve students’ first-year experiences.

“I’m here to help you think about how you can be even more productive,” said Barefoot during the program in the Constitution Room in Memorial Hall entitled, “Defining and Measuring First-Year Experience.”

While improving first-year experiences may help students, the institutions will also see improvements in the increase of productivity of students, better campus organizations and an overall positive atmosphere. The old method of having students “sink-or-swim” has been found to be ineffective and it is very rare for a student to feel motivated to try harder after being told there’s a good chance they won’t survive college.

“I think we have seen vast improvements in education, but we seem to have hit a glass ceiling of work where we can see the other side but don’t know how to get there,” said Barefoot.

Attendees were given a survey to rate their institutions with questions asking about the degree to which their institution informs their first-year students about expectations; students’ understanding of the rationale behind general education courses; the institution’s collective sense of purpose.

“I have to emphasize that no single person, department, or unit can improve the first year alone,” said Barefoot. Barefoot says that it must be up to the university as a whole to help in the process of improving their campuses.

A nine-part model was shown which included improvements in learning, faculty being more involved with their students. Simple measures such as learning their students’ names were listed as a way to promote a deeper connection, as well as helping students know their purpose at the university.

“I want to expand your view and think of the components that affect students’ transitions from first-year to second-year,” said Barefoot.

There was a push to have more critical thinking implemented into first-year classes because of the lack of it and a move away from having students just take down notes and take bubble tests. The impersonality of first-year classes is fed by the fact that the classes can be large with too many students for a faculty member to get to know personally, which may not change.

“We’ve stopped challenging them and studying them to see if they’re a good idea,” said Barefoot about changes that could be done to first-year classes.

Often in the past, the first year for college students has been seen as a “cash cow” for universities because of the money that is being put into the school from tuition and the good possibility that a student may drop-out of college after that year. It is hoped that universities will move away from such methods and look towards trying to keep the students in the institutions.