When freshmen arrive at UMD...

The Freshman Year Residential Experience Program

While the university has always had programs and activities geared toward freshmen, the effort is being strengthened and diversified for the class entering UMD this fall.

Through the upcoming "Freshman Year Residential Experience Program:"

• all freshmen, and only freshmen, will live in three residence halls, where a "living/learning environment" will be cultivated;
• a pilot Freshman Seminar will be required for 400 of the roughly 1,250-1,300 entering freshmen (with a 25 student-per-section maximum). Faculty and staff will discuss topics such as time management, self-identity, and making the transition from high school to college. More course sections may be offered depending on demand.
• a peer mentoring center will use upper-level and graduate students to advise freshmen on academic, social and personal matters;
• programming will foster the connection between traditional learning and extra-curricular activities. Foe example, faculty/staff "Fellow-In-Residence" will mingle informally with students at plays, films, concerts, etc. Professors, administrators, and alumni will regularly have dinner with small groups of students, with follow-up discussions for larger groups.

These plans, plus the program's corollary components, constitute what Barber calls a "comprehensive approach to enhancing the personal, social, and academic success of first-year students" - success that does not come easily.

"For most freshmen, this is the first time away from home and their parents. They have a lot more independence, so there's the issue of time management," says Barber. "They have more responsibility for themselves, which sometimes means more opportunities to get into trouble.

"Then there are identity issues. ‘Who am I really, away from my parents and the environment I grew up in? I've always been told by others who I am, what to do, how to do it, when to do it.'

"It's the first time many are living in a diverse population, diverse in every sense of the word. Communal living is a new experience. What if you've had your own room for 18 years and now you're in a triple? You're with people you don't know and you're asking, how do you socialize, interact with others?"

And there are the well-documented anxieties about academic performance. Students who earned honors in high school and "were supposedly the best and the brightest now are not feeling competent at all. That is a big issue."

The difficult transition discourages many students. In recent years, between 21 and 24 percent of UMD's freshmen never returned for their second year (the average figure among comparable schools). Definitive research data is limited, but the presumed reasons are many: academic problems, transfer to another school, lack of money, a sense of "not a good fit," uncertainty about career goals, and personal circumstances.

Barber says that while improving the overall freshman experience was the primary motivation, higher retention is an inevitable and desirable spin-off of the new initiatives.

By instituting a freshman seminar, the university is adopting a common practice. More than 70 percent of American schools offer some kind of freshmen orientation course, according to the National Resource Center for First-Year Experience. UMD's version, says Barber, will embrace social/personal adjustment issues as well as academic and learning topics, so as "to develop a community of scholars within a larger institutional setting."

Krissi Moron, a senior accounting major and an assistant resident director, feels "the course is a very good idea." In her first year, she struggled academically, and believes freshmen would welcome more information about resources, and constant encouragement to use them.

"I think the first topic for the class would be how to study, how to write papers, that you need to edit them, (that you should) plan ahead and don't try to do everything the day before it's due.

"The biggest problem freshmen have is handling freedom. It's easy to stay out late a lot and procrastinate about your work."

And those tendencies give Moron some qualms about designating three residence halls exclusively for freshmen. If some older students lived among freshmen, "they could be role models. Freshmen see them studying and balancing responsibilities - like, 'Well, we'll study for two hours then we can go get ice cream.'"

Barber, however, says the plan reflects recognition of the special issues of freshmen. "Their level of maturity is different. They're at a certain place in their lives. The other students have gone through the adjustments that freshmen still have to go through.

"We want to have more influence on the freshmen and this will help."

A key characteristic distinguishes this First Year Program - its integrated approach to the freshman experience. Virtually every component combines the academic with the extra-curricular, the social with the scholarly. Administrators believe all parts of the freshman experience take from, and contribute to, each other; and that the successful experience is the "total" one.

The residence halls, for example, are to be "living/learning communities" in several ways. Students who share certain academic interests - such as honors students or the IMPULSE engineering majors - live together, so their classroom interactions and relationships carry over into their social life.

Another component, "Project Connections," will nurture active learning outside the classroom. Activities will center on several themes; as students work on a particular project, says Barber, they will come to see themselves as part of a community. Both the Freshmen Lecture Series and the Fellows-in-Residence Program bring lectures, cultural events, and social activities to the students where they live.

Such merging of the various aspects of college life is intended to demonstrate that living is learning and vice-versa.

Diane H. Hartnett
Alumni Magazine, Spring 2004, Pages 17-19

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 Last Updated On: 11/2/06