By Leah Moore
First Year Experience staff assisted in designing a class for college freshmen called University Strategies. Attending University Strategies with a positive attitude and an open mind can help students ensure success in the formation of good study habits, and is a key class to earning a diploma. The choices made when students enter college plays an important role in how the journey will end, which is why University Strategies is a requirement and one that should not take lightly.
“Graduation rates are low and many freshmen drop out during their first year because they don’t know what it takes to be successful,” said Brian Searcy, student success coordinator. “We hope the students will gain motivation and skills needed to persist to graduation.”
A new program added to University Strategies this year, Making Achievement Possible, is a web-based tool, designed to survey first time freshmen students. The survey helps determine how students are transitioning into higher education, academic expectations and behaviors and how aligned they are, said Searcy. Students will complete four surveys during their freshmen year – two in the fall and two in the spring. The completed fall surveys count for 20 percent of the University Strategies grade.
During the third week and the seventh week of fall semester, students are sent an e-mail from Searcy with a link to the MAP-Works survey. Within two weeks of completing the survey, students will receive a personalized report in the following categories:
- How to meet their expectations
- What their peers say
- How to be more successful at NSU
- What campus resources are available to them
“Hopefully students will gain insight in to how their behaviors must line up with their expectations,” said Searcy.
Students, who are at risk, will be contacted by a team of faculty and staff; who will offer guidance, answers questions and help in the process of making achievement possible.
For more information regarding MAP-Works, visit www.map-works.com.
Very informative article! I wish I would have had such a survey when I was a freshman to give me an idea of what to expect and how to be more successful in my transition from High School to College. You can tell that a lot of time went into researching the information and details of the article.
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