University of Nebraska Kearney

First Year Program Assessment Report: 2004 Section 4: Campus Initiatives

1. Website: Dr. Daryl Kelley was responsible for getting the First Year website up and running. At this point it includes a home page, an "about page, list of FY courses, information about submitting FY course proposals and Student Peer Leader information, and links to other first year experience websites. The plan is to include pages on study skills, campus resources, upcoming FY events, FY faculty and SPL bios. (See Appendix C: Website.)
    
2. A brochure introducing the First Year Program to potential students and their parents was created and distributed via Admissions mailings. This brochure was also used to announce the program on the UNK campus and various other venues organized by the Chancellor's office. In addition, a FY card will be used during Summer Advising and Enrollment (SAE) to help with registration. (See Appendix D: Brochure.)
    
3. Currently the Office of Academic Advising directed by Mary Daake and assisted by Amy German has been the most important vehicle for promoting the FY program to students. The Academic Advising office is responsible for recruiting and registering First Year students during Summer Advising and Enrollment. At that time, they present the goals and objectives of the program to students and parents and answer questions. In addition the Director of Academic Advising monitors course enrollment to ensure that only incoming first year students are assigned to First Year courses and that enrollment is kept at a maximum of 25 per section.
    
   

   As the FY program has grown, controlling registration has become more difficult and both department chairs and the Academic Advising office have voiced concerns about creating a policy for monitoring these courses throughout both spring and summer registration. Such a policy will be crucial to registering students and maintaining the General Studies core.
    

4. Information literacy, approached through basic library proficiency, is a goal of the FY program and the library participates in both training FY faculty and presenting library orientation to the FY sections. Better integration of the library and technological services was a recommendation from the 2003 FY annual report. To that end, Trudy de Goede and Mary Barton, have prepared a program for the FY sections focusing on each discipline's needs and requests; this approach obviously complicates their "standard" library orientation essentially creating more work for them. Their efforts have increased the FY students' awareness of library resources from fall 2002's 73% to 79% in fall 2003.
    
   

   The difficulties in preparing FY library orientation create redundancy with English 101/102 library orientations, overlap of library computer labs, and variety of FY faculty's needs for library instruction.
    

5. With the reorganization of Academic and Student Affairs offices, it was difficult to initiate new programs with Student Affairs. Better coordination and cooperating between Residence Halls and Student Services providing academic support needs to be a priority in recommendations.
    
6. During the 2002 FY pilot program cooperated with the Center for Teaching Excellence in preparing Training Workshops and providing additional support via video-conferences from National Center for the First-Year Experience at the University of South Carolina. However, this past year, there has been no support from the Center, and without that support, the preparation for workshops and other instructional support has fallen solely on the Director. This additional responsibility has been incredibly time-consuming: reserving rooms and catering services; preparing topics for campus workshops and FY training sessions; locating speakers; preparing programs, etc.