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The Title III Planning Grant: An Opportunity for Reflection and
Then Action
Florida Atlantic UniversityJanuary 28, 2005
John N. GardnerExecutive Director
Policy Center on the First Year of CollegeBrevard, NC
A Few Opening Perspectives
My central question/challenge/dilemma: what can I tell you that might make a difference to you? That you might remember? That might help you help your students be more successful learners? That might stimulate an epiphany for you?
I was almost not retained: why should you listen to
Gardner (3F’s, 2D’s, and 1 A)?
A central question is “Who is responsible for student learning and retention?”
The most common answer is: not me, not the campus,
but the student.
I argue, we have to take responsibility for student
learning
• As individuals
• As an institution
• Versus “blaming the victim”
Until recently we have had a high tolerance for failure
and we assumed the rightness of academic social
Darwinism
Students are highly mobile and lack loyalty to a brand, just like other Americans
High school isn’t working for many—especially in
math preparation—the key intellectual competency for all the pre-wealth majors! Need to declare war on disgraceful college math
failure rates.
US lacks requirements for national service and has no tradition of a gap year. Thus there’s more immaturity in new students. This is one more reason for you and
your courses to get aboard the civic engagement
movement.
There is a “male problem” although few leaders seem to really want to talk about
this
Today’s students don’t learn the way we teach
(implications for faculty development)
Remember, colleges were designed for people like me, not today’s students—we’ve changed the pipeline, but
not the pipe
The faculty rewards culture, in most tiers, works against improving student learning
and retention
Is Student Retention a Shared Goal?
Common Points of Dissension• Improving retention = admitting
better students• Retention = lowering standards,
coddling• “Student success” = code for retention• Retention = someone else’s job• Many students don’t belong in college
Is Student Retention a Shared Goal?
• More students than we can accommodate = why worry about retention?
• Retention focus = consumerism or “customer service”
• Retention = a topic that is banal and lacks intellectual substance
Most Common Strategies for Dealing with Retention
Necessary but not Sufficient
With few exceptions, programs and initiatives intentionally designed for first-year students are still on the periphery of
institutional life--i.e., focus not in the classroom, not on what faculty do; primary emphasis on what student affairs staff and
academic administrators do.
1. Advising (training, evaluation, rewarding, improved information and accessibility).
2. Improved diagnostic assessment, testing, course placement and tracking.
3. * Orientation (longer, required vs elective, credit vs non-
credit).4. Student affairs co-curricular programming.5. Peer leader focused programming (advising, counseling, orientation, tutoring, leadership, etc).6. Counseling services.7. Career planning.
8. * Remedial/developmental education and services.
9. Academic support services.
10. * First-year seminars.
11. * Learning communities.
12. * Supplemental Instruction.
13. Service learning.14. Health education initiatives to address STD’s and binge
drinking.
15. * Residence hall programming and academic redesign.
16. Assistance for commuter students.17. Assistance for non-traditional students.
Teaching/Learning
Consider the university as a model structure for new
student learning
• large classes for intro courses• cheap labor for intro courses• the publish or perish model• the lecture as primary medium for
communication between instructor and student
• the weed out model• low status of the beginning college
experience
If you accept the desirability of improving student
learning and retention, the first year of college cries out
for attention, study, and especially action!
• the undergraduate curriculum• choosing a major• establishing a good GPA• learning good study habits• developing “economies of time”• developing positive attitudes toward faculty• getting in the habit of interacting with faculty outside of class• developing positive attitudes toward the campus• developing long term relationships that will last through and beyond college• deciding on which groups to affiliate with• acquiring behaviors that may carry over beyond college• redefining roles between students and family members, and employers• introducing students to civic engagement• providing a baseline for assessment of student characteristics,
behaviors, and learning outcomes
Why is the beginning college experience important?
It is the FOUNDATION for:
Current Status of the First Year
• Unacceptable levels of student failure and attrition during or immediately after the first year
• Attendant expenses of remediation, repeating failed courses, recruiting new “replacement” students
• Negative consequences of student behaviors and experiences related to attrition: absenteeism, lack of enthusiasm for the core intellectual mission, anti-intellectual behaviors, dysfunctional student behaviors, property damage, student health problems, and student loan default
What are some of the central variables related to this problem
of the first year of college• The first year is not designed for the
students we have (vs. the ones we either used to have or would prefer to have).
• There often is no clear first-year purpose/philosophy that is public, articulated and prized by the institution. Instead we hang on to the historic purposes:
• make money, • weed out, • allow most senior members of the community
to ignore first-year students
• The status of the first year and its students, as well as the status of those who work with them and advocate for them, is low.
• We have a long-standing tradition of dealing with first-year students as “freshmen” and all that that term signifies.
• We still see lasting influences of a culture of academic social Darwinism.
• The primary focus of the academy is on graduate education or upper divisions of undergraduate education. This leads to overemphasis on the major at expense of new students, students who have not yet declared a major (at their own peril), and general education (the perennial stepchild)
• Those who respond to these problems are often educators who do not hold faculty rank and tenure and whose activities are largely at the margins of academic life—not at the center.
• The majority of the “reform” efforts are at the “program”/unit level, and not usually institution-wide.
• There is a lack of central authority and direction for the first year. This often means that nobody is in charge, there is little or no coordination and no central advisory mechanisms for stakeholders and advocates.
• Finally, there is often no central plan, grand design, or core principles or standards for changing this state of affairs.
Principles of Good Practice
• The foundation of first-year student success is institutional commitment.
• Efforts begin with a focus on student learning, inside and outside the classroom, as the highest institutional priority.
• Partnerships between academic and student affairs are essential.
• A delicate and judicious balance of challenge and support is necessary.
• First year student success is more likely when institutions hold students to high standards of performance which are communicated through high expectations.
*From Challenging and Supporting the First-Year Student: A Handbook for Improving the First Year of College; Lee Upcraft,
John N. Gardner, and Betsy O. Barefoot. Jossey-Bass. San Francisco. 2005.
• Campus climates that are inclusive and supportive of first-year students are more likely to produce higher levels of student learning.
• Systematic assessments are essential to improve student and institutional performance.
• Students are more likely to succeed in an atmosphere where they are treated with dignity and respect.
• First-year students can be taught the strategies and skills they need to be successful.
• Faculty are an important key to first-year student success, and failure to get faculty involved will seriously undermine institutional success to increase the success of first-year students.
• Ultimately, first year students themselves must assume ultimate responsibility for their success, but, to be sure, institutions also have a high responsibility to create an environment that both challenges and supports that success.
Organizing for First-Year Student Success
• Include in the institutional mission statement a strong statement about the success of first-year students.
• Develop a strong commitment of the most senior administrative officers to provide the leadership and resources necessary for first-year student success.
• Engage deans and department chairs in first-year student success initiatives.
• Create a permanent advisory structure to assist policy and decision makers on matters pertaining to first-year student success.
• Focus enrollment management initiatives not only on the recruitment and admission of qualified students but on subsequent student success initiatives.
Promoting First-Year Student Success in the Classroom
• Place faculty at the center, the heart, of initiatives for first-year student success.
• Provide professional development activities and support to improve the abilities of faculty and staff to engender first-year student success.
• Develop first-year seminars that have academic integrity.
• Reform classroom practices so they reflect an understanding of and appropriate response to the realities of student learning.
• Create developmental education opportunities that promote the intellectual potential of all students.
• Create Supplemental Instruction opportunities that assist students in historically challenging courses in the first year.
• Develop academic advising that is tailored to the specific needs of the institution and its students.
• Focus more library instructional initiatives on first-year students and promote information literacy skills early and throughout the first year.
Promoting First-Year Student Success outside the Classroom
• Develop orientation programs that help students make a successful transition to college by the academic and the social components necessary for student success.
• Create learning environments both on and off campus that are consistent with and supportive of the curricular goals of the institution, including residential learning environments and out of class, and off campus learning environments that facilitate maximum opportunities for faculty-student interaction.
• Target all support services to first-year student success.
• Develop alcohol and other drug educational and prevention programs.
Promoting Collaboration and Partnerships between Student Affairs and Academic Affairs
• Involve the chief academic and the chief student affairs officers in joint undertakings to bring their units together in the integration of in-class and out-of-class learning activities and environments.
• Develop and jointly support service learning initiatives in the context of credit-bearing classes.
• Develop and jointly support learning community curricular structures.
Making Assessment an Essential Part of Promoting First-Year
Student Success
• Develop a comprehensive assessment program to evaluate initiatives and courses necessary for first-year student success.
• Disseminate assessment findings and demonstrate how these have been utilized for revision of policies and practices for first-year students.
Other Recommendations• Develop school-college partnerships that are
designed to involve K-12 schools in first year student success efforts.
• Look beyond the first year of college to subsequent transitions so as not to abandon “challenge and support” simply because students have managed to get beyond this first year obstacle course.
• Undertake a comprehensive study of the entirety of your institution’s formal and informal, curricular and co-curricular experiences so as to confirm what’s working well and to develop an improvement plan for subsequent action to address what is not working as well. The Foundations for Excellence ® in the First College Year is one model for conducting such a self study (see www.fyfoundations.org).
A few concluding suggestions:
• aspire to be an “institution of excellence in the first college year”
• respect your students• celebrate student success• pay attention to students needs for ritual
and tradition• educate the whole student• provide stable leadership at whatever
levels you can control• assess performance: yours, your students,
your campus and confirm what is working, and address what isn’t
Thank you and have a good year!
