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Engaging Today's Students with the Liberal Arts

Creating a Coherent First-Year Experience at St. Olaf College

St. Olaf College

Project Description

In our June 2003 grant application, St. Olaf College's Committee on First-Year Experience (CoFYE) proposed to develop an innovative model of inquiry for exploring in depth the profile of our incoming students. We proposed to describe the purpose, methods, and desired outcomes of each of the component parts of the first-year experience, as well as to articulate our overall vision, including goals and expectations, of the first year of a liberal arts education at St. Olaf College. We proposed to study the compatibility between the students we enroll and the first-year experience we provide.

The Self Study: Scope and Methods of Inquiry

A faculty and staff committee representing student support services and the first-year curriculum studied profiles of and trends among first-year students at St. Olaf College as they compare to first-year students nationally. We focused on student engagement, asking to what extent first-year students at St. Olaf engage academically and socially, how St. Olaf student engagement data compare to National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) data, and how St. Olaf's curriculum and support services work to engage students. To gauge national trends, we read Millennials Go to College by Neil Howe and William Strauss, Making the Most of Your College Experience by Richard Light, and Clueless in Academe by Gerald Graff, in addition to numerous related articles.

CoFYE systematically studied St. Olaf support services that typically serve first-year students. Representatives from these offices met with our committee, described their support for first-year students, and provided documents available to students through their offices. The CoFYE became a central repository for otherwise scattered information about support resources.

After completing an inventory of required courses and courses in which first-year students typically enroll, CoFYE facilitated a series of focus groups with over 100 students and 40 faculty. Focus group questions paralleled selected areas of inquiry found in NSSE, which St. Olaf conducts every other year. Focus group results enabled us to read NSSE data with greater insight. More importantly, repeated reference to subtle or weak connections among components of the first-year experience suggested one area for curricular and faculty development.

Four members of our committee, two faculty and two staff, facilitated a roundtable discussion about our self-study at the 2005 Annual National Conference on the First-Year Experience. We attended pre-conference workshops and a number of sessions involving the Foundational Dimensions developed by the Policy Center on the First Year of College. Although we came to these guiding statements fairly late in our self-study, they reinforced our initial impulse to study the first year and to refine our model of inquiry.

Outcomes of the St. Olaf First-Year Experience Self-Study

Our self-study yielded the following outcomes:

• A comprehensive overview of the diverse ways through which students experience their first year at St. Olaf. None is more or less valid than the others; each in its own way offers students ownership in choosing the experience most fitted to their interests and strengths.
• Deeper understanding of the extent to which students experience the general education curriculum as a vital and integral part of their first year of college. Focus group responses suggest that students who view general education requirements, particularly first-year writing and religion, as discreet from one another and from courses in majors, may perpetuate high school attitudes and behaviors of learning as "doing" rather than an ongoing process of thinking and learning. Students benefit from faculty's explicit connections among courses. A question remains: If students do not engage in general education courses during their first year, to what extent will they realize the purpose of and fully engage in a liberal arts education?
• Preliminary dissemination of results through faculty development forums sponsored by the St. Olaf Center for Innovation in the Liberal Arts. Specifically, CoFYE presented commonalities (e.g., residential with roommate, 18 - 19 years old, governed by current College catalog) and the range of difference (e.g., home commitments, level of coursework, work for pay as necessity) among first-year students. Differences outweigh commonalities, supporting a model that offers more than one kind of first-year experience.
• Redevelopment of faculty orientation for teaching First-Year Seminar. This workshop now includes intentional discussion of the relationship between first-year student engagement, writing, and college success.
• Recommendations for revising the College Admissions web site and for developing an interactive web training guide for new advisors.
• Contributions to a first-year student binder presenting information previously mailed to students from separate offices on different dates. Beginning this year, the First-Year Dean's office will mail this binder to incoming students during the summer prior to their arrival. CoFYE's emphasis on a coherent first-year experience supported already existing efforts to develop this binder.
• Preliminary development of ongoing orientation activities. Our self-study revealed that during their second semester, first-year students are more confident academically and socially. However, while they may recognize that high school study skills and behaviors are no longer adequate, they may not yet have developed a college support network that will best serve them. In response, CoFYE is working on a model to distribute Week One activities throughout the semester and into a series of Interim seminars.

Recommendations

• Invite several "stakeholders" to participate in the self-study. Stakeholders represent programs and offices who work directly with first-year students and who have enough institutional influence to involve the larger community and, if applicable, to implement change. CoFYE found it crucial to bring together representatives from student life and academic divisions.
• Involve a balance of "thinkers" and "doers." Gathering information, deepening the inquiry, and disseminating information requires both types of people.
• Before beginning a self-study, read the Foundational Dimensions developed by the Policy Center on the First Year of College. If possible, send several "stakeholders" to the Annual National Conference on the First-Year Experience. Borrowing responsibly from already existing models of inquiry, benchmarks, and objectives can save time and effort.

What We Learned About Liberal Arts Education

Our self-study reveals that the first-year at St. Olaf College is not a single, common experience; students choose from an array of models according to their strengths and interests. Given this understanding, CoFYE has come to question assumptions that veterans of liberal arts learning and teaching may make about students' experience during their first year of college, particularly in terms of general education curriculum. Our self-study clarified a lack of explicit connection among courses in which first-year students typically enroll. We may assume that students will apply content and skills they learn in one course to assignments for another. But for grade-oriented, risk-averse students, as Howe and Strauss characterize some Millennial students, that cognitive leap across course boundaries may not happen without explicit guidance, encouragement, and permission. Likewise, we question if and how students connect academic, support service, residential, and extra-curricular experiences. We are looking to our Conversation Programs, a series of one- and two-year intentional learning communities, as models for building coherence among more loosely structured first-year experiences. Our self-study has highlighted the importance of dialogue among academic and student support professionals at a residential liberal arts college whose philosophy of general education embraces both curricular and extra-curricular experiences.

Mary Cisar, Registrar

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