Conference Follows up on First-Year Retention Plans From: University Currents Date: May 12, 2000 Story by: Marianne Kunnen-Jones Phone: (513) 556-1826 Archive: Campus News Nationwide, nearly 27 percent of the 1.64 million students who started college last fall will drop out before fall 2000. As part of its effort to reduce attrition from the first year to the sophomore year at UC, the university invited one of the nation's top experts on student retention to campus last week. Nationwide, nearly 27 percent of the 1.64 million students who started college last fall will drop out before fall 2000. As part of its effort to reduce attrition from the first year to the sophomore year at UC, the university invited one of the nation's top experts on student retention to campus last week. John N. Gardner, executive director of the Policy Center on the First Year of College based at Brevard College, spoke May 5 at Kingsgate Conference Center in a daylong workshop for college representatives responsible for designing new and improved first-year experience courses to retain UC's first-year undergraduates in colleges that admit freshmen. Nearly every UC undergraduate college has been awarded State of Ohio Success Challenge funds to bolster their efforts to help first-year students stay in college and reach graduation. The funds, ranging from $6,500 to $34,000 per college, have been allocated through a selection committee formed by the university's Strategic Enrollment Management Initiative and headed by Stanley Henderson of the Office of Enrollment Management. They are part of the Success Challenge Campus Plan. The workshop organized by Linda Cain, associate provost in the Office of the Senior Vice President and Provost for Baccalaureate and Undergraduate Education, and Terry Bullock of University College marked Gardner's second appearance this academic year at UC. His visit in October 1999 generated enthusiastic evaluations that urged the university to bring him back for a follow-up, said Cain. "His first visit was intended to get the juices flowing and the ideas coming about what we can do to improve the success of our first-year students. And it worked because most of you received Success Challenge grants to help you do that," Cain told the 50 conference participants from 13 of UC's colleges. Before arriving in Cincinnati the second time, Gardner took time to examine each college's proposals for helping first- year students and told conference-goers the university had a good chance of being successful at the first-year retention efforts because of four factors: The state of Ohio is financially backing efforts and mandating universities to address the issue. At least some UC units have a history of experimentation in the area. Colleges are building assessment, which is a critical component, into their first-year retention plans. The effort is not ad hoc; it's university-wide. Gardner met with each college team to discuss specifics of their programs. Participants also had the opportunity to attend sessions on serving learning, learning communities and the "First-Year Experience at UC, What Has Worked and What Hasn't." Gardner complimented many aspects of the UC college plans and particularly noted University College's first-year plan, which proposes to expand its five-and-a-half week "Orientation to Learning" course, previously offered to academically at- risk students, to all of its entering freshmen beginning this fall in a total of 48 sections of 25 students each. Effective retention programs must include ways of making the larger seem smaller and "integration" not the civil rights kind in this context, but a mixing of academic and social life, Gardner stressed. At the end of the conference, Cain announced her office has received Success Challenge funding to organize first-year experience conferences again in fall and spring 2000. By fall, she said, a web site for faculty will be established through UCit to focus on the issue. Also she has received approval for a $10,000 fund that will help faculty to pay for social activities, such as pizza parties and cultural outtings, to be held outside of class time. Survey addresses freshmen worries A lot of today's college freshmen are stressed out, worry about making ends meet and completing all the tasks confronting them, according to an annual survey of the nation's first-year students. Findings from the 1999 UCLA study include: Female students report suffering from stress at a rate nearly double that of males. A record-breaking 30.2 percent of freshmen feel "frequently overwhelmed by all I have to do." It continues an upward trend that began in 1985, when only 16 percent reported feeling stressed. A record 24.7 percent of freshmen also report "some" or a "very good" likelihood that they will work full time while in college, a possible contributor to their high levels of stress.