Academic advising: new insights for teaching and learning in the first year by
Published in partnership with NACADA, The Global Community for Academic Advising Grounded in the philosophy that academic advising is a robust form of one-on-one teaching, this monograph places advising in a new light, one that brings it to the center of the institutional mission and activity. The monograph challenges all readers to embrace the tremendous potential that academic advising has for educating today's college students. Chapter authors explore the advising paradigm; examine current student demographics; and address learning patterns, self-assessment, and technology as key components of advising. Chapters also explore academic advising before enrollment and beyond the advising office, as well as the critical issue of advising assessment. The diverse populations of first-year students addressed in this monograph include adult learners, students of color, students with disabilities, honors students, undecided students, first-generation students, and GLBT students. The monograph editors conclude the volume by offering a series of recommendations and addressing the future of advising.
Academic Advising and the First College Year by
Published in partnership with NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising Academic advisors help students learn to make the most of their college years, not merely by completing requirements toward a degree but also by growing intellectually and developing all aspects of their identity. Yet, many professional and faculty advisors are new to academic advising and may feel ill-equipped to do more than help students register for classes. This new edited collection provides an overview of the theory and best practice undergirding advising today while exploring the transition challenges of a wide-range of first-year college students, including those attending two-year colleges, coming from underrepresented backgrounds, entering underprepared for college-level work, and/or experiencing academic failure.
Achieving and Sustaining Institutional Excellence for the First Year of College by
In 2002, the Policy Center on the First Year of College (supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Atlantic Philanthropies, and Lumina Foundation for Education) sponsored a project to recognize colleges and universities as "Institutions of Excellence" in their design and execution of the first year. Thirteen colleges and universities?representing a broad spectrum of campus types?were selected as exceptional institutions that place a high priority on the first-year experience. Achieving and Sustaining Excellence in the First Year of College includes case studies of each of the thirteen exemplary institutions. These studies illustrate and analyze the colleges? best practices in teaching, assessing, and retaining first-year college students. The individual case studies offer lessons learned and have broad potential application beyond the particular type of institution represented.
College Knowledge: what it really takes for students to succeed and what we can do to get them ready by
Although more and more students have the test scores and transcripts to get into college, far too many are struggling once they get there. These students are surprised to find that college coursework demands so much more of them than high school. For the first time, they are asked to think deeply, write extensively, document assertions, solve non-routine problems, apply concepts, and accept unvarnished critiques of their work. College Knowledge confronts this problem by looking at the disconnect between what high schools do and what colleges expect and proposes a solution by identifying what students need to know and be able to do in order to succeed. The book is based on an extensive three-year project sponsored by the Association of American Universities in partnership with The Pew Charitable Trusts. This landmark research identified what it takes to succeed in entry-level university courses. Based on the project's findings - and interviews with students, faculty, and staff - this groundbreaking book delineates the cognitive skills and subject area knowledge that college-bound students need to master in order to succeed in today's colleges and universities. These Standards for Success cover the major subject areas of English, mathematics, natural sciences, social sciences, second languages, and the arts.
Developing and Sustaining Successful First-Year Programs by
Praise for Developing and Sustaining Successful First-Year Programs "An essential guide to the thorny task of not only developing successful first-year programs, the critical building blocks for student college completion, but also sustaining them over time. It should be at the top of the reading list of all faculty, staff, and administrators concerned with making substantial improvements in student success in the first year of college." --Vincent Tinto, Distinguished University Professor, Syracuse University "Grounded in scholarly literature and higher education theory, Developing and Sustaining Successful First-Year Programs provides a much-needed next-generation resource to advance a comprehensive, integrated, and multi-faceted first-year experience as well as practical guidance to educators who want to become more effective first-year student advocates." --Jillian Kinzie, associate director, Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research, NSSE Institute "The authors do an excellent job both of providing a conceptual framework for the first year and of grounding their program descriptions in the work of a diverse range of campuses, providing exemplars of good practice, centered on assessment, in enhancing student academic achievement and persistence. The book will be of use both to policy makers and administrators focused on enhancing student success and to practitioners who will make good use of excellent observations and recommendations." --Scott Evenbeck, president, The New Community College at CUNY
Emerging Research and Practices on First-Year Students by
What factors contribute to students' lasting success? Much research has explored the impact of the first year of college on student retention and success. With the new performance-based funding initiatives, institutional administrators are taking a laser-focused approach to aligning retention and success strategies to first-year student transition points. This volume enlightens the discussion and highlights new directions for assessment and research practices within the scope of the first year experience. Administrators, faculty, and data scientists provide a conceptual and analytical approach to investigating the first-year experience for entry-level and seasoned practitioners alike. The emerging research throughout this volume suggests that while many first-year programs and services have significant benefits across a number of success outcomes, these benefits may not be universal for all students. This volume: Examines sophisticated empirical models Provides critical assessment practices and implications. Examines the four-year college and the two-year institution, which is just as critical. This is the 161st volume of this Jossey-Bass quarterly report series. Timely and comprehensive, New Directions for Institutional Research provides planners and administrators in all types of academic institutions with guidelines in such areas as resource coordination, information analysis, program evaluation, and institutional management.
First-generation college students : understanding and improving the experience from recruitment to commencement by
FIRST-GENERATION COLLEGE STUDENTS "...a concise, manageable, lucid summary of the best scholarship, practices, and future-oriented thinking about how to effectively recruit, educate, develop, retain, and ultimately graduate first-generation students." --from the foreword by JOHN N. GARDNER First-generation students are frequently marginalized on their campuses, treated with benign disregard, and placed at a competitive disadvantage because of their invisibility. While they include 51% of all undergraduates, or approximately 9.3 million students, they are less likely than their peers to earn degrees. Among students enrolled in two-year institutions, they are significantly less likely to persist into a second year. First-Generation College Students offers academic leaders and student affairs professionals a guide for understanding the special challenges and common barriers these students face and provides the necessary strategies for helping them transition through and graduate from their chosen institutions. Based in solid research, the authors describe best practices and include suggestions and techniques that can help leaders design and implement effective curricula, out-of-class learning experiences, and student support services, as well as develop strategic plans that address issues sure to arise in the future. The authors offer an analysis of first-generation student expectations for college life and academics and examine the powerful role cultural capital plays in shaping their experiences and socialization. Providing a template for other campuses, the book highlights programmatic initiatives at colleges around the county that effectively serve first-generation students and create a powerful learning environment for their success. First-Generation College Students provides a much-needed portrait of the cognitive, developmental, and social factors that affect the college-going experiences and retention rates of this growing population of college students.
The First-generation Student Experience: implications for campus practice, and strategies for improving persistence and success by
More first-generation students are attending college than ever before, and policy makers agree that increasing their participation in higher education is a matter of priority. Despite this, there is no agreed definition about the term, few institutions can quantify how many first-generation students are enrolled, or mistakenly conflate them with low-income students, and many important dimensions to the first-generation student experience remain poorly documented. Few institutions have in place a clear, well-articulated practice for assisting first-generation students to succeed. Given that first-generation students comprise over 40% of incoming freshmen, increasing their retention and graduation rates can dramatically increase an institution s overall retention and graduation rates, and enhance its image and desirability. It is clearly in every institution s self-interest to ensure its first-generation students succeed, to identify and count them, and understand how to support them. This book provides high-level administrators with a plan of action for deans to create the awareness necessary for meaningful long-term change, sets out a campus acclimation process, and provides guidelines for the necessary support structures.At the heart of the book are 14 first-person narratives by first-generation students spanning freshman to graduate years that help the reader get to grips with the variety of ethnic and economic categories to which they belong. The book concludes by defining 14 key issues that institutions need to address, and offers a course of action for addressing them. This book is intended for everyone who serves these students faculty, academic advisors, counselors, student affairs professionals, admissions officers, and administrators and offers a set of best practices for how two- and four-year institutions can improve the success of their first-generation student populations.An ACPA Publication"
The First Year at University: Teaching Students in Transition by
This book offers a range of practical strategies, underpinned by relevant research, which lecturers can implement when charged with working with first year students in order to ease their transition to higher education.
The First Year of College: research, theory, and practice on improving the student experience and increasing retention by
This book is premised on a very powerful social/educational concern about college retention rates: one-third of first-year students seriously consider leaving college during their first term, and only half of all students who start college ultimately graduate. This book examines the first year of college from a variety of perspectives to paint a comprehensive picture of the intersecting challenges facing today's students and higher education institutions. Technological advances, increases in college attendance costs, and increasing political pressure on colleges to prove their value have changed the landscape of the first year of college, but researchers have identified new approaches to improve student and institutional success that have shown considerable success and promise. In this comprehensive volume, top educational researchers explore topics of student success, persistence, and retention in the first year of college.
Putting Assessment into Action: selected projects from the first cohort of the Assessment in Action grant by
Are you new to library assessment? Are you tasked with conducting an assessment project and don't know what methods to use, or which ones are the most effective (or practical)? The methodological issues addressed in Putting Assessment into Action are based on the real world, practical experience of librarians who participated in the first cohort of the Assessment in Action project.
The Role of the Library in the First College Year by
Published in partnership with the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association 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. In this new volume, librarians, classroom faculty, administrators, and higher education researchers come together to explore the potential of the library in shaping the student experience. Chapter authors explore structures and practices for helping students learn to navigate the college library; use the Internet effectively; and find, analyze, and incorporate information into their academic work -- a critical foundation for college success. Thirteen case studies present detailed information on current practice from a variety of campus types.