What Makes the First-year Seminar High Impact?

Book excerpt: The responsibility for college success has historically rested with the student, but since the 1980s, educators have taken increasing ownership of this, designing structures that increase the likelihood of learning, success, and retention. These efforts have included a variety of initiatives--first year seminars, learning communities, writing-intensive courses, common intellectual experiences, service-learning, undergraduate research, and senior capstones among others--that have come to be known as high-impact practices. Although first year seminars have been widely accepted as a high impact educational practice leading to improved academic performance, increased retention and acquisition of critical 21st Century outcomes, first-year seminars tend to be loosely defined in the literature. National explorations of course structure and administration demonstrate the diversity of the curricular initiatives across various campuses. In order to determine the attributes that all of these varied courses share in common that contribute to their effectiveness, the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition at the University of South Carolina invited contributions for a book exploring effective educational practices within the first-year seminar. This collection of case studies represents a wide variety of institutional and seminar types. The authors describe the structure, pedagogy, and assessment strategies that lead to high quality seminars and they offer abundant models for ensuring the delivery of a high-quality educational experience to all entering students. The table of contents includes the following: (1) Structural Supports for Effective Educational Practices in the First-Year Seminar (Tracy L. Skipper); (2) The American University of Rome (Jenny Petrucci); (3) Cabrini University (Richard Gebauer, Michelle Filling-Brown, and Amy Perischetti); (4) Clark University (Jessica Bane Robert); (5) Coastal Carolina University (Michele C. Everett); (6) Durham Technical Community College (Kerry F. Cantwell and Gabby McCutchen); (7) Florida South Western State College (Eileen DeLuca, Kathy Clark, Myra Walters, and Martin Tawil); (8) Indiana University--Purdue University Indianapolis (Heather Bowman, Amy Powell, and Cathy Buyarski); (9) Ithaca College (Elizabeth Bleicher); (10) LaGuardia Community College, CUNY (Tameka Battle, Linda Chandler, Bret Eynon, Andrea Francis, Preethi Radhakrishnan, and Ellen Quish); (11) Loyola University Maryland (Mary Ellen Wade); (12) Malone University (Marcia K. Everett, Jay R. Case, and Jacci Welling); (13) Montana State University (Margaret Konkel and Deborah Blanchard); (14) Northern Arizona University (Rebecca Campbell and Kaitlin Hublitz); (15) Southern Methodist University (Caitlin Anderson, Takeshi Fujii, and Donna Gober); (16) Southwestern Michigan College (Christi Young, Jeffrey Dennis, and Donald Ludman); (17) St. Cloud State University (Christine Metzo); (18) Texas A & M University-Corpus Christi (Rita A. Sperry, Andrew M. Garcia, Chelsie Hawkinson, and Michelle Major); (19) The University of Arizona (Marla Franco, Jessica Hill, and Tina Wesanen-Neil); (20) University of Kansas (Alison Olcott Marshall and Sarah Crawford-Parker); (21) University of Maryland Baltimore County (Lisa Carter Beall); (22) University of New Hampshire (Neil Niman, Tamara Rury, and Sean Stewart); (23) University of North Carolina Wilmington (Zachary W. Underwood); (24) University of Northern Iowa (Deirdre Heistad, April Chatham-Carpenter, Kristin Moser, and Kristin Woods); (25) University of Texas at Austin (Ashley N. Stone and Tracie Lowe); (26) University of Texas at San Antonio (Kathleen Fugate Laborde and Tammy Jordan Wyatt); (27) University of Wisconsin-Madison (Susan Brantly and Sorabh Singhal); (28) Virginia Commonwealth University (Melissa C. Johnson and Bety Kreydatus); and (29) Conclusion: What Does It Mean to Be High Impact? (Tracy L. Skipper). (Individual chapters contain references.).