by Jay Aguila
Staff Writer
Just two years after its cancellation, the freshman course University 100 is scheduled to be reinstated in Fall 2004.
The one-unit course was started 13 years ago to help incoming freshmen make the transition from high school to college.
It dealt with such issues as homesickness and time management.
“It gave freshmen an opportunity to get accustomed to the transition from home to college,” said a senior computer engineering major Eric Dueñes, who took U-100 in fall semester 2000.
By the end of its last run in 2000, however, less than 20 percent of faculty participated in the program, said Brian Armstrong, leadership development and transition program director.
Greater faculty participation was critical for the program, Armstrong said. “Ultimately the program was not meeting its outcomes.”
In a recent push to lower the student dropout rate here, a committee called the Transition Task Force was put in charge of getting the freshman course back on track for last fall.
The task force, however, did not feel confident with the old model so it postponed reinstating the course for another year.
Armstrong said the cruse will be different from the previous U-100.
The benefits, he said, are that students feel connected to campus, they get to develop a relationship with a full-time faculty member and discussions on transition issues will be focused on more than they were in U-100.
“National data says that programs are more successful when they are academically based and even more when the school’s faculty teaches them,” said Loretta Rahmani, dean of student affairs.
One of the concerns of the task force is to gear the new First Year program toward majors.
Rather than being placed with just any professor, new students would be placed in classes that would focus on their field of interest.
“This is something that is still being figured out,” Rahmani said.
But not all students and faculty are excited about the course’s reinstatement, even in its new-and-improved format.
Some faculty members have expressed concern about adding the additional overload class to their already busy schedules.
Others raised questions about the timing of this reinstatement – which would call for addition overload pay – as departments across campus are looking to trim their operating budgets.
And juniors and seniors on campus, who took the class during its last go-round said they found it to be of little value.
