Program
Self-Study
The University
100 Program
California
State University, Long Beach
Report Prepared by:
Peter Lowentrout, Director
The University 100 Program
With the advice and assistance of
The University 100 Faculty Advisory Committee
and the Faculty of The University 100 Program
Submitted:
The University 100 Program offers University 100, The University in Your
Future, a required one-unit academic
course that introduces freshmen to the history of the university, trains them
in the use of our research library, and familiarizes them with those academic
and practical skills necessary for success as a university student. Designed by the faculty, the course has two
components: a fifteen-hour classroom component taught by University 100
instructors, and a library component which is self-paced and self-instructed
under the administrative guidance of the Library Instruction Office in the
University Library. The Program has a
Director who reports to the Dean of Undergraduate Studies, one full-time
administrative assistant, and an active Faculty Advisory Committee. The course will enroll 4600 students in AY
2001-02 and employ the services of 61 instructors.
In Spring semester, 1979, the Academic
Senate recommended and the President approved a policy statement creating the
University 100 program. That policy
statement (79-15) reads as follows:
To qualify for graduation, all undergraduate students shall complete a one-unit course which includes instruction on the following topics: (a) history, missions and structures of American universities, (b) use of the University Library, and (c) career planning. This course should be completed during the first or second semester in which a student enrolls for more than six units of coursework.
The procedures for developing this course and the
subsequent review and approval of the course will be the responsibility of the
Planning and Educational Policies Council subject to Financial Affairs Council
review and approval of the final detailed proposal.
The Planning and Educational Policies Council will
evaluate this course not later than four years after its initial offering.
Effective:
Fall, 1981
Instruction began in the University 100
program in the fall semester 1981 under the direction of Dr. Kathryn Goddard,
then Associate Dean of Student Services.
A text for the “history and mission” portion of the course had been
created under the direction of Professor Albie Burke, Department of
History. The text for the “career
planning” portion of the course was acquired from commercial sources, and
Professor Paul Bott, Department of Vocational Education, coordinated this
portion of the course. A library
instruction text was initially created by Maria Sugranes, Library Instruction
Coordinator, under the direction of Helen Britton, Associate Director,
University Library. Faculty were
solicited from a wide variety of disciplines within the University to teach in
the program. Some 3,600 students were
enrolled in University 100 during the 1981-82 academic year.
In Spring 1982, Charles LePard,
Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs, was appointed director of the
program. It had become evident during
the 1981-82 academic year that the policy requiring all undergraduate students to complete the University 100 course
would need revision. In 1981-82, 9,200
students had been admitted to the University, but only 3,600 students had
completed University 100. The remaining
5,600 students could not be accommodated in classes in the 1982-83 academic
year along with the 9,000 students admitted in that year. Interim procedures to limit enrollment were
therefore implemented for 1982-83, and, in spring 1984, the Academic Senate
recommended and the President approved a policy limiting the University 100
requirement to freshmen and sophomores.
The revised portion of the policy reads:
To qualify for graduation, all undergraduate students who
enter the University in the fall semester 1982 or thereafter with 59 or fewer
transferable college semester units shall complete a one-unit course. . .
In Fall 1987, upon the death of Charles
LePard, Sharon Olson was appointed as the director of the program. In response to continuing comment from
transfer students that, although the course seemed valuable for freshmen,
juniors and seniors had acquired much of the information and grappled with many
of the issues that comprise the University 100 curriculum, the policy statement
governing the course requirement was once again revised in the Fall of
1989. Since students are certified from
community college at 56 units, it was decided to require the course only of
students who enter the University with fewer than 56 units. This revision had also been recommended by
the PEP sub-committee that reviewed the University 100 self-study in
1985-86. The new policy recommended by
the Academic Senate and approved by the President reads:
To qualify for graduation, all undergraduate students who
enter with fewer than 56 transferable semester units shall complete a
one-unit course. . .
Beginning with the spring semester of
1990, the University stopped admitting lower-division, transfer students. As a result, University 100 became a true
freshman course, and it remains so to this day. This new policy initially raised some concern among the faculty
that freshman students would no longer be exposed to the more mature
perspectives of older returning and transfer students. In response to that concern, a new component
of the course was developed for the Fall semester, 1990. This component, supervised by faculty, is
titled University 400 and utilizes juniors and seniors who may earn up to three
units of elective credit (one unit for each semester they enroll) by making
presentations or participating in classroom discussions in sections of
University 100. This component was well
received by the faculty and evaluated highly by students. It is still in use in the Program in AY 2001-2002.
Recent changes in General Education policy on campus have affected University 100. Policy Statement 00-00, which became effective in Fall semester, 2000, makes University 100 part of the GE Foundation:
The Foundation curriculum consists of twelve units of general education courses that meet the distribution requirements in Categories A and B2, and one unit of University 100. The following courses make up the Foundation:
University 100 (1 unit), "The
University." This course, which is
a graduation requirement for students entering as lower-division students,
shall be developed collaboratively by the faculty teaching it. It shall be pedagogically coordinated with
the skills and content of the first-year curriculum. It shall introduce students to the history of universities
(including the history, mission and character of CSULB) and current issues in
higher education. It shall introduce
students to the use of our academic research libraries and also introduce then
to the skills essential for success in an academic environment…
The 13-unit Foundation must be completed by the time
the student has completed 36 units…
Between Fall 1982 and Spring 1989, the
course enrolled approximately 4,500 students per academic year. When the new unit requirement took effect in
fall 1989, enrollment dropped to 3,738
in the 1989-90 academic year and 3,677 in 1990-91. Since lower-division, transfer students were no longer being
admitted to the University, the enrollment was reduced to approximately 2,900
for the 1991-92 academic year.
By Fall, 1992, the University was in a fiscal crisis as a result of the deep recession of the early 1990s, and all general fund support was withdrawn from University 100. From then until AY2000-2001 when full funding of class sections from the general fund was restored, University 100 became the only academic course at CSULB, and a required course at that, not fully funded by General Fund monies. The Program survived because of the commitment of its instructors who initially volunteered their services, were then for a time compensated with a $200.00 per unit stipend, and finally, as general fund support was slowly restored, taught for a combination of assigned time and/or stipend. Though not in strict conformance with the then current MOU, the faculty union supported these stopgap funding and staffing measures. As a result of the recession of the early 1990s, then, and with the McCray administration attempting for a short time to eliminate lower-division studies (and enrollments) at CSULB altogether, University 100 enrollments dipped to just over 1000 for a year and have then increased steadily to the present. Rough enrollments for University 100 were 1800 students in 1995-96, 2200 in 1996-97, 2600 in 1997-98, 2850 in 1998-99, 3400 in 1999-2000, and 3400 in 2000-01. The University 100 Program was expected to enroll between 3950 and 4200 students in AY 2001-02. As a result of an unexpected surge in enrollments, however, AY 2001-02 enrollments are closer to 4600. The Program is currently allotted 4.5 faculty positions, which, given the current mix of instructional ranks, will fund approximately 150 course sections in the year ahead. The Program compensates Colleges and Departments at the vacant rate for the use of faculty; staff are compensated at Lecturer Range L, Step One. (See the "Contract of Compensation" and the memo "New University 100 Instructor Compensation Policies" in Appendix A for a fuller description of Program compensation policies.)
Funding for the $200.00 stipend that was used in the Program from 1992 to 2000 came from increasing the price of the University 100 course text from $12.99 to $25.00. The price of the text to students has remained at $25.00 through AY 2000-2001. In AY 2001-02, the text has been reduced in price to $23.95. This rather conservative initial reduction is necessitated in part by increases in text production costs over the past 9 years that were absorbed without a concomitant increase in the price of the book. Too, recent changes in copyright law have increased the cost of annual permissions for the course text, which now run just over $1800.00 annually. Finally, the sale of the text is the main source of funding for the University 100 Program's staff position, a full-time Administrative Support Coordinator I. The Program would very much like to regularize funding of its staff position by having the cost of staffing added to its annual general fund allocations. When the Program directorship changed from a full-time staff director to a faculty director who is given only 3 units of release time for the performance of his duties, it is now especially important that staffing arrangements in the Program be made as stable as possible.
Those who teach in the program maintain an extremely high level of enthusiasm for and continue to be stimulated by both the course curriculum and the opportunity to convey the ideals of the university to new students. In AY 2000-2001, 66 instructors taught 159 course sections in the Program. Three of these instructors have been teaching in the Program since its inception. Letters go out periodically to all faculty asking those interested in teaching University 100 to submit a letter of interest and a vita. Usually, the Director hires University 100 instructors, though in instances of a possible conflict of interest (as in hiring members of the Director's own department), the executive committee of the University 100 Faculty Advisory Committee acts as a personnel committee to vet applications and hire instructors. The Director's and personnel committee's hiring decisions are made in consultation with other faculty, department chairs, and deans. As students in University 100 Fall Presemester class sections are grouped according to their College affiliations, every effort is made to have a good balance of instructors from all seven of CSULB's Colleges. It has sometimes been difficult to maintain sufficient numbers of instructors from the Colleges of Business and Engineering because of the difficulty of finding qualified part-time lecturers to replace COB and COE faculty who teach in the Program. To prevent misunderstandings and to provide for the clearest possible communication of an instructor's intent to teach in the Program, instructors who are hired to teach in University 100 fill out and sign a Contract of Compensation that specifies how many sections of the course they will teach and when those sections will be taught. The Contract is then signed by an instructor's Department Chair or Supervisor, her or his Dean or ASM, the Director of University 100 and the Dean of Undergraduate Studies. (See the "Contract of Compensation" and the memo "New University 100 Instructor Compensation Policies" in Appendix A for a more complete description of Program compensation policies.)
Faculty effectiveness is not evaluated
using the official university evaluation form but with a course evaluation
specifically designed by the Faculty Advisory Committee for University
100. This course evaluation is
non-quantitative and has remained substantially the same since the inception of
the Program. Over the past two years,
the Director of University 100, the U100 Faculty Advisory Committee and
University 100 Program staff have explored the possibility of developing a
quantitative instrument to supplement the current evaluation. Finding a cost-effective and useful
quantitative evaluation has proven difficult.
The current quantitative evaluation used University-wide is finally not
suitable for University 100 as fewer than half the questions on that evaluation
are appropriate for University 100 classes.
Further, when Institutional Research was approached about the
possibility of using standard course evaluations in University 100 classes,
there was some resistance on the grounds that IR was not and has never been
budgeted for such a purpose and, too, that the logistics would be nightmarish,
given the odd schedule (from the perspective of IR) on which University 100
courses are offered. Indeed, getting
quantitative evaluations to and from 4,000 students is costly -- if the
University 100 Program were to go it alone, designing its own evaluations and
leasing the equipment to scan them, the cost would be several thousands of
dollars per year. Scantron forms alone
would cost nearly $2000.00. There may,
however, be a better solution on the horizon.
The FPPC has piloted the use of a commercial quantitative evaluation
form, the IDEA evaluation, in a range of courses on campus, and will shortly
recommend its adoption by the University.
The IDEA evaluation has a larger number of standard questions that are
appropriate for University 100 classes, and it also allows Programs and
Departments to add their own questions to the evaluation. The University 100 Program very much
supports this new evaluation instrument and looks forward to its use in Program
classes. In years past, University 100
Program administrators were told that the Program could not use the standard
University course evaluation as it was not contractually permissible for
faculty to be evaluated outside the disciplinary areas in which they had been hired. The Program Director has been told, however,
that under the current MOU this is no longer a problem. It is the position of the Director and the
Faculty Advisory Committee of University 100 that the University should fund
quantitative evaluations for University 100, just as it does for all other
academic courses offered by the University.
University 100 course content remains 1)
the history and mission of the university, 2) current issues in higher
education 3) career planning, and 4) library instruction. An academic course, the strong emphasis in
University 100 classes is upon the history and mission of the university and
current issues in higher education.
"Career development" is included in the course as well, but as
the needs of our students have changed over the years, so too have the mix of
subjects considered under the rubric of "career development." In Fall semester, 1995, a group of sixteen
CSULB faculty and administrators met for several hours in the College of
Business' Computer Assisted Decision Lab to consider the operation and future
directions of the University 100 Program.
This brainstorming session was very fruitful, and a second was
scheduled, but the Lab was shut down prior to the second meeting. (The computer
technician who designed and operated the Lab was hired out from under us by
UCLA.) The full results of this session
are included in this self-study as Appendix B.
Briefly, those in attendance felt very strongly that long-term career
development was much less important to students than introducing them to and
evaluating them for the skills they would need to succeed in their first year
at the University. This clear consensus
affirmed a pedagogical direction already established by faculty in the
classroom and in the evolution of the University 100 course text - in recent
years, less emphasis has been put pedagogically on long term career development
in the University 100 classroom and more emphasis has been put upon those
learning and self-management skills necessary for success in college and career
alike. Through its required writing
component, for instance, the course has allowed faculty to assess the
entry-level writing skills of each student and to refer students who do not
demonstrate college-level writing ability to the Learning Assistance Center and
the Writers' Resource Lab.
The course is now offered in two formats during the academic year: a “pre-semester” class meeting daily for three hours in the week before each regular semester, and an “in-semester” class meeting for three hours one day per week for the first five weeks of each semester. The Program does its best to "frontload" its class offerings; approximately 75% of its class sections are offered in the Fall semester. The logistics of faculty compensation and faculty and classroom scheduling, as well as the need to serve freshmen who start at the University in the Spring semester, prevent the Program from offering more sections in the Fall semester. The course is offered during Summer and Winter sessions in the one week (five day) format. Classes are scheduled at a variety of times to meet student demand. Until recently, the Program offered an intensive session meeting all day for two days, both during the pre-semester week and on Friday and Saturday for the first three weeks of the semester. This intensive format has now been dropped; faculty teaching it decided it was simply too rushed, not giving students the time they needed out of class to do readings and assignments and to absorb the course material.
The University 100 program works hard to
effectively coordinate with and complement other programs and units of the
University. In University 100 sections taught in the Fall presemester, students
with majors in the same college are grouped in classes and are taught by
instructors from the their own colleges, allowing a felicitous pedagogical and
informational focus in these sections. Since 1991, The Learning Alliance, one
of our campus' most vital learning communities, has offered ten to twelve
University 100 class sections per year under its aegis. Over the past three years, Learning Alliance
University 100 sections have been coordinated with CLA 195, Introduction to the Learning Community, a one-unit
course. For two years now, two very
successful sections of University 100 have been coordinated through Student
Athlete Services for the benefit of incoming freshmen athletes. In Fall semester, 2000, one section of
University 100 was offered through GLOBE, the Global Learning Option for a
Broader Education, CSULB's newest learning community. In Fall, 2001, two
sections will be offered to students in that learning community. Learning Alliance, Student Athlete Services
and GLOBE University 100 syllabi and course materials are included in this
self-study in Appendix C. The
University 100 Program looks forward to participating in AY 2002-2003 in Beach
Beginnings, a new effort by the College of Liberal Arts to move students from
all colleges in cohorts through a range of coordinated general education
classes in their first year at the University. The University 100 Program
continues to coordinate with SOAR (Student Orientation and Registration) to
assure no duplication of effort and to promote as much synergy as possible
between the two programs. Though
University 100 is an academic orientation to universities and university life
and SOAR is an advising and registration program that also orients students to
on-campus student services, the two programs do share the common element of
"orientation." The University
100 Program and its faculty maintain close connections to the Learning
Assistance Center, the Career Development Center and the Academic Advising
Center. Other programs and offices that
play an important role in University 100 and its classes include the Multicultural
Center, the University Art Museum, the Counseling and Psychological Services
Center, the Student Health Center, Archives & Special Collections, Academic
Computing Services, Student Life and Development, the Japanese Garden, and the
University Police. The Director of
University 100 has served on the Academic Advising Council since the inception
of that Council, and on the Advisory Board of Student Athlete Services. He has served, too, in the First Year
Experience Working Group that coordinates our campus' efforts at improving
freshman retention and success.
The University 100 Program is reaching
out to colleagues on other campuses, as well as our own. Over the past year, the Director of
University 100 has worked to establish the First Year Regional Exchange (FYRE),
currently a consortium of freshman seminar programs at six CSU campuses (Long
Beach, Dominguez Hills, Los Angeles, Fullerton, San Diego and Monterrey
Bay). Headquartered at CSULB, it is
hoped that the Exchange will soon be adding regional community colleges, as
well. This is the statement of purpose
of the First Year Regional Exchange:
The First Year Regional Exchange (FYRE) will
facilitate the exchange of pedagogical materials and innovative ideas
concerning the operation and development of participating first year seminar
programs. FYRE will offer support, as
requested, to participating programs undergoing their various university review
processes, and it will support the regional development of freshman seminar
programs. FYRE will maintain a
listserve and website announcing regional events of interest to the
participating programs and listing a wide range of resources of special
interest to the organizers of first year seminars. The FYRE Forum will meet periodically for the exchange of views
and information, particularly as regards regionally shared fiscal and
institutional opportunities and problems.
II. Curriculum
A. Program Goals
The University 100 Program was designed to introduce students to the ways a college education can enrich the whole of their lives and not just help them find a better job, to help them understand the place of the university in the larger contexts of contemporary society, and to encourage them to make the best use of their educational experience. Through course readings, in-class discussions, and library exercises, students come to understand how and why universities have developed over the centuries; the difference between education and training; the relationship between general education, majors, and electives; the tension between the university’s obligation to the student and to the larger society; the importance of a “global education;" the importance of critical thinking, analytical, decision-making, and communication skills; the rights and responsibilities of academic freedom and tenure; the role of interests, skills, and abilities in self and career development; the access to and manipulation and use of our vast reserves of data in an information age; the ability to use research skills to enable life-long learning; and the benefit of co-curricular activities in developing friendships, leadership potential, and understanding of other cultures and peoples.
At its meeting on May 19, 1982, the
Faculty Advisory Committee of the University 100 program approved a statement
of goals for students in the program.
These goal statements continue to be used as the curricular guide for
the program and are summarized in the “Preface” to The University in Your Future textbook. (The complete text of the "Goal Statements and Course Competencies
for University 100" may be found in Appendix D, along with the University
100 Standard Course Outline and the University 100 Faculty Manual.) In 1996, the Director and the Faculty
Advisory Committee of University 100 developed a standard course outline for
University 100 that lists these Course Competencies:
Students
completing University 100 shall be able to:
1. discuss the role of the
university as it has changed through the centuries,
2. describe the qualities
that an educated person should possess,
3. define academic
integrity, academic freedom, academic tenure, and academic responsibility,
4. describe the purpose of
a liberal education and how the general education requirements at
California State University, Long Beach are related to
liberal education,
5. describe the purpose of
both undergraduate and graduate education,
6. describe the mission of
the CSU system as well as the specific mission of CSULB,
7. define the roles and
responsibilities of students, faculty, staff, and administrators of higher
education,
8. discuss the moral
necessity and practical utility of the university community's positive
valuation
of tolerance and diversity,
9. discuss classroom decorum
and the fundamentals of civility in the academic community,
10. describe services, facilities, and opportunities at CSULB for
academic and personal
development,
11. initiate steps toward becoming an educated person as reflected
in an ability to use resources on
campus and in the community in a collaborative manner,
12. define the elements of the career planning process and
describe the CSULB services related to
career planning,
13. use effectively the CSULB Catalog and CSULB Schedule of
Classes,
14. use effectively campus information resources and receive
initial training in using these
resources, and
15. make effective use of the CSULB research library.
B. Structure
and Rationale of the Curriculum
The University 100 classroom component
covers the history and mission of higher education, curriculum issues, academic
freedom and tenure (which includes student and faculty roles, rights, and
responsibilities), and career planning, including those academic and practical
skills necessary for success as a university student. The University 100 library component is a self-paced program
using a handbook, Library Matters,
published as section five of the University 100 course text, and one assignment
with 34 questions. Approximately 2
hours of fieldwork or practicum are required to complete this component. Consultation with library faculty is
available to all students who are unable to successfully complete the
assignment on their own. Please refer to the University 100 Standard
Course Outline and Goal Statements in Appendix D and the course text, The University in Your Future, for
detailed descriptions of the structure and rationale of the curriculum.
The number of freshman seminar courses
offered at universities and colleges nationally has increased significantly
since the founding of CSULB's University 100 Program. From just a handful in 1981 when our own Program was established,
just over 70% of accredited undergraduate institutions in the United States
were offering such courses as an elective or a requirement in 1997.[1] Over the past
twenty years, colleges and universities have discovered that being more
directive with students increases student success, retention and persistence to
degree. Rather than simply letting students "sink or swim," such
efforts as our own University 100, our mandatory advising processes, the
Learning Alliance learning community, and coordinated advisement programs such as
Beach Beginnings and GLOBE are today helping more students than ever succeed in
their first year at CSULB. (To see the salutary affect these efforts
have had on freshman success at CSULB, please see "Probation Rates of
First Time Freshmen from 1991 to 1999" in Appendix E.) Too, as a college education has
become more available to non-traditional and first-generation college students,
the need for an “academic orientation” to university traditions and instructor
expectations has increased.
And the need for such an orientation
will increase further in California as our undergraduates become ever more
diverse in the years ahead. It is
projected by the California Postsecondary Education Commission that by the year
2010 Latino American undergraduates in the CSU will have increased to 26% of
total undergraduates from 23% in 2000 and Asian American students to 24% from
22%. African Americans and Native
Americans will remain at a steady 7% and 1% respectively, while CPEC's White/Other
category will decline from 42% of total undergraduates in 2000 to 38% of
undergraduates in 2010. Freshman seminars are an excellent way to "break
the ice" and get students communicating.[2]
Most beginning college students have
given little thought to acknowledging the importance of their place in the
world, their responsibility for the future of humankind, or the relationship of
their higher education experiences to their lives and their careers, let alone
to their role at the university they have chosen to attend. According to Ernest Boyer, “new [college]
students have little sense of being inducted into a community whose structure,
privileges, and responsibilities have been evolving for almost a millennium.”[3] Universities
are increasingly acknowledging their responsibility to acclimate students to
academic discourse and scholarship and thus help make them successful and,
ultimately, contributing partners in the academic community.
The curriculum of freshman seminar
courses in the United States varies significantly, but falls generally within
two broad categories: extended orientation seminars (which include an
orientation to such topics as campus resources and traditions, campus life,
time management, study and research skills, career planning, etc.) and academic
orientation seminars (which include discussion of such concepts as university
traditions, curriculum issues, academic freedom, tenure, cultural diversity,
career planning, etc.).[4] The
University of South Carolina, which began its freshman seminar in 1972, has
served nationally as a model of the extended orientation course. The University 100 program at CSULB, which
began in 1981, has served as a national model for the academic orientation
course. In the early years of
University 100, the Program received hundreds of requests for its textbooks and
course materials.[5]
Wayne State University offers a freshman
seminar very similar to CSULB's University 100. University General Education
100 (UGE 100) at Wayne State was developed in 1986 in consultation with the
former director of CSULB's University 100 Program, Charles LePard. After an extensive national survey by the
director of UGE 100 of other campuses that offer freshman-year courses, Wayne
State decided to model its curriculum on University 100, relying heavily on
materials and themes developed for the course at CSULB. UGE 100 is also a one-unit, credit/no credit
course that is required of all entering students. The course text includes a compilation of articles similar to
those used in University 100, and the Faculty Guide suggests uses and
discussion themes for the class which are similar to those used in University
100. In addition to Wayne State making
use of CSULB’s approach to library instruction, the details of the computerized
record keeping used by the Library for the library component and the classroom
portion of University 100 were shared with Wayne State.
For
comparative purposes, synopses of the freshman seminar programs taught at six
large four-year institutions with student populations over 12,5000 are included
in Appendix F. These institutions are San Diego State University, UC Santa
Barbara, Washington State University, CSULB, the University of South Carolina,
and Wright State University. The first
four are examples of academic orientation seminars, the final two are examples
of extended orientation seminars.
D. Current
Trends in the Discipline
As noted, there is now a
well-established 20-year trend at colleges and universities toward the
development of freshman seminar courses intended to enhance students' prospects
for a successful first year. Such
courses are also part of a more recent emphasis in American higher education on
finding ways to enhance undergraduate persistence to degree. The curriculum for
these courses is, and should be, tailored to the nature, region, size, type,
and selectivity of each institution.
Pedagogical research has shown, however, that there three interrelated
factors which serve as “predictors of first-year student success: (1) a felt
sense of community (2) involvement of students in the total life of the
institution, and (3) academic/social integration during the freshman year.”[6] The
University 100 course at CSULB has always responded, particularly in the
current issues and student and faculty roles, rights, and responsibilities
components of the course, to national issues of importance to college students
and to campus-specific issues which affect CSULB’s own student population. The curriculum has long considered the
ways in which we can live together in a pluralistic society (see articles in
the AY 2001-02 edition of the University 100 text by Sauceda, Lewis, Gonzales,
Kerr, Siegel, Wallace, and Mendelson).
Recent editions of the University 100 text, The University in Your Future, have added essays on the nature of
university community (Van Giffen, Franklin), the history of CSULB (Fimlaid,
Stone, Gloady), Special Collections (Alkana, Still-Meyer), the importance of
computer literary (O'Donnell, McBride), classroom etiquette (Alkana, Trout,
Morales, Altschuler), and new "issue" articles (Wallace, Schmidt,
Cole, Siegel, Gonzales, Kerr, Weiss, hooks, Stokes, Street, Brownstein,
Foster). (For ease of reference, the
Table of Contents of the course text is included in Appendix G.) It
is anticipated that the University 100 course curriculum will continue to focus
on the needs of first-year college students through revision of the course text
to incorporate themes which facilitate the students' full integration into the
university experience and by pursuing partnership with programs like GLOBE and
the Learning Alliance which attempt to enhance students' academic success.
The University 100 course materials
created by University librarians, which are required to complete the University
100 library component, are revised annually to reflect library reorganization,
new resources and services, and changes in campus information technology. Computer literacy has been incorporated as a
fundamental part of teaching the basics of the library research process. Indeed, where students once had to actually
enter the Library to complete their University 100 Library assignment, the
librarians have now set up the library component such that a student with the
course text and home internet access can complete the assignment handily.
E. Changes in
the Curriculum since the Last Review
As University 100 is a single-course
program, the curriculum for the course is embodied in the textbook which all
faculty use as assigned reading and a stimulus for classroom discussions. These readings reflect the goal statements
and course competencies established by the faculty, which have not changed
since the last review. When the program
was first developed, there was a single text for the classroom component, written
by CSULB faculty, which was composed of only four articles covering each of the
four main themes of the classroom component of the course. That text had been written in response to a
request by the faculty to develop a text with articles which were not too
lengthy, too difficult, too obtuse, or too narrow in focus for a freshman
course. Faculty quickly decided that
this text did not give students enough exposure to the great range of issues in
contemporary higher education. The 1983
edition of The University in Your Future
received the same criticism—the articles were too lengthy; did not give faculty
enough latitude in structuring the class and the discussion; did not offer
sufficiently contrasting views or alternate perspectives; and, with only four
articles in the text, prohibited a “personalization” of the course.
In 1986, a faculty committee developed a
new text composed of articles from such sources as the Chronicle of Higher Education, Time,
Newsweek, and The Los Angeles Times. This collection of articles was meant to be
readable and provocative, and to raise questions and issues more than offer pat
answers. Such topics as the importance
of studying a foreign language and being globally educated, being sensitive to
gender and multi-cultural differences within society, and applying ethics in
both the university and workplace were added to the current issues section of
the text. This expanded text allowed
faculty the flexibility to assign articles which best suited their own approach
to the course while still covering all of the main themes mandated by the
required curriculum.
The career development portion of the text continued to assist students in making the connection between a university education and the world of work. While the relationship between a university education and the world of work is one which educators, students, and society at large have now come to recognize and to acknowledge, students should not be mislead by the common notion that a university education is an automatic guarantee of lifelong happiness and success. The section on career planning was intended not so much to help students choose a major or a first job, but rather it was intended to stimulate students’ thinking about those personal values, interests, and skills which contribute more widely to lifelong happiness, to success, and to society. It was and is intended to encourage students to make the connection between a university education (as it reflects and shapes our values, interests, and skills) and the broader notion of a career.
Through 1987, the only campus service
covered in the text was the Career Development Center. It had become clear to faculty by then that
new students needed information about the full range of campus services
available to help them develop those academic and practical skills necessary
for them to succeed at the university.
Students did not seem to be getting that information consistently
through either SOAR or the Student
Handbook that was published at the time.
The Division of Student Services was,
therefore, asked to develop a smaller second text, Getting the Most Out of Your University Experience, that would
complement the Program's academic text, The
University in Your Future. Randy
Zarn, Student Life and Development, and Deborah Veady, Career Planning and
Placement, developed that text using a “wellness” model to introduce students
to campus services, plus such topics as student organizations, diet and health,
substance abuse, and AIDS. This text
was written “in house” with articles authored by professionals in such units as
the Learning Assistance Center, the Health Center, the Counseling Center, the
Career Development Center, and Student Life and Development. An experimental version of the text was used
in selected sections of the course in spring 1988 and, after evaluation by
faculty and students, was first used on a regular basis in the fall of
1988. The career-planning component
continued to be an integral and vital part of this “campus services” text.
Until 1996, the University 100 text was
published off-campus. Since then, the
text has been published on-campus by the University Bookstore, and, with layout
and graphic design done on the Program's MacIntosh, this new publishing process
has allowed much greater flexibility in the editing of the text. Since 1997, annual editions of the text have
been produced, and the evolution of the text has been somewhat more rapid than
in previous years. University 100 is
publishing a single text once again with the three older texts (The University in Your Future, Getting the
Most Out of Your University Experience, and the Library Skills Handbook, now renamed Library Matters) combined in
one volume. Exercises on tear-out sheets are now able to be included in the
text. Exercises currently on tear-out
sheets in the course text are "The Name Game" (an introduction to
university jargon), "Family Educational History," "Designing a
University Education" (an exercise designed to show the utility and
inherent interest of general education), "Who Would You Admit?,"
"Skills Checklist," "Values Clarification," and
"Research Your Career."
Editorial decisions are made by the Program Director in consultation
with the University 100 Faculty Advisory Committee and University 100
instructors. Twice in the period under
review, all University 100 instructors have been carefully polled concerning
their use of the text articles and the pedagogical utility for them of each
feature of the text. Program instructors regularly submit articles from a
variety of sources to the University 100 office for consideration for future
editions of the text. The Program
administrative assistant undertakes regular Internet searches for pedagogically
useful articles for their possible inclusion in the text.
The Library portion of the text has
changed considerably since the last PEP review of University 100 as a result of
profound changes in library information resources and information
technology. The Library's University
100 Committee (currently composed of librarians Charles Phelps, Wendy Culotta,
and Susan Luevano-Molina) is charged with
keeping University 100 library component course materials up to date.
Librarian John D'Amicantonio is the Library's liaison on the University 100
Faculty Advisory Committee as of the Fall semester, 2001.
The first library text, published in 1981
and entitled Library Instruction Handbook,
was revised in 1987 and again in 1988.
It was substantially revised in 1990, when it was retitled Library Skills. The 1990 edition reflected two major
adjustments in content and in form.
Content changes were required as a result of the increasing emphasis in
the library on computerized access to information. In addition, a decision was made to concentrate on the three
major sources of information for undergraduates (books, journals, and
newspapers) in a single coordinated process with one subject theme running
throughout the text and assignments. This shift from resources or materials to
processes was considered to be critical to the retention and transfer of skills
learned and thus to the students’ educational future. Process was inherent in previous workbooks, however this shift in
emphasis was viewed as more effective in developing students' research
skills.
When the University 100 library component was first implemented twenty years ago, students completed three library skills assignments, each 18 to 20 questions in length and answered on Scantrons. In 1990, the three assignments were reduced to two, each 25 questions in length and also answered on Scantrons. A post-assignment test required through AY 1989-90 was replaced by a tutoring session with a library faculty member for those students who had difficulty in successfully completing the assignments. Initially, individual sessions of up to 1/2 hour were available, and then group sessions of up to ten students and one hour were implemented and the individual sessions were dropped. Librarians working with students felt the small group sessions allowed for better learning opportunities, including reinforcement, peer tutoring, one-to-one tutoring, and hands-on experience.
In Fall, 1995, the Library's University
100 Committee reviewed the University 100 Library
Skills workbook. The workbook covered every aspect of basic library skills,
but it did not mention the new online catalog, COAST, or other electronic
databases that were quickly replacing the library's paper indexes. The workbook was scholarly and provided a
comprehensive review of the research process. The librarians decided that the
library component needed a fresh approach that was more visually interesting
and more practical. The revamped Library
Matters workbook and its attendant assignment put greater emphasis upon the
physical layout of the library, the role of librarians in the research process,
and the mastering of COAST, the online catalog. Students were also required to view “Liberspace,” a short video
on university level research that emphasizes the helpful role of librarians in
guiding students through the research process. The librarians assert that this
narrowing of the pedagogical objectives of the library component was the result
of research into the changing learning styles of freshman and their realization
that most students were not reading the Library
Skills workbook. Their hope in revising the workbook was that students
would master the noted new areas of emphasis during their first year on campus
and return in later years to master other library resources. The revised
workbook is a third the size of the older edition. The former assignments were also completely re-written and
reduced in number to one assignment of 32 questions. Every summer a group of
library faculty updates and reevaluates the workbook and accompanying
assignments. The most recent curricular change (Fall, 2001) has been the
elimination of the required viewing of the video “Liberspace.” It was determined by the library faculty and
the Dean that the video, while helpful, is now out-of date regarding the
rapidly changing technological resources of the University Library.
One persistent problem with the library component in the past was the large number of students not meeting the library deadlines for completion of assignments and thus not completing the course. For much of the history of the Program, students have been given approximately seven weeks to complete all their library work. Library incomplete rates typically ranged from 17% to 23% of students taking the course. In 1992, in an attempt to make the library course materials more engaging and thus to increase component completion rates, the second library assignment was revised and was focused on a specific subject area so that students could choose a topic of interest to them. The result was a reduction of typical library assignment incomplete rates to roughly 12%. Three years ago (AY 1998-99), the Program began reducing the time allowed students for completing their library component work, and in AY 2000-01, students were required to complete their work and hand it in to their instructors at the third class session. Instructors then turned the students' assignments in to the Library Instruction Office. (Previously, students turned their work in to the LIO themselves.) As a result, library component incomplete rates were less than 3% in AY 2000-01.
To supplement the brief presentation of
selected campus services in its current text, the Program recommends that its
instructors take their classes to the Learning Assistance Center (LAC) for a
thirty-minute introduction to, and to be signed up for, LAC services. During the LAC presentation, students are
introduced to the services offered by the LAC, which include one-hour study
skills workshops (Time Management, Study Reading, Notetaking, Research Paper
Preparation and Test Taking Strategies), group tutorials, individual appointment
tutoring, supplemental instruction classes, and the international conversation
lab. Class sections might also visit,
at the discretion of the instructor, the Career Development Center, Counseling
and Psychological Services, the Multicultural Center, the Center for
International Education, the Japanese Garden, the University Art Museum, and
Special Collections in the University Library.
A University 100 Program policy adopted by the Faculty Advisory
Committee in 1997 limits the number of such class excursions to no more than
three, including the LAC. Short
videotaped presentations that faculty can show in the classroom have been
developed or purchased by the Program.
These tapes include: “Liberspace: The CSULB Library", “The CSULB Career Development Center -- The
HAL 2001 Computer," “Facing Differences: Living Together on Campus” (about
stereotyping and prejudice), "Learning to Hate" (produced by the
Anti-Defamation League), "Distorted Image: Stereotypes and Caricature in
America, 1850-1922 (produced by the Anti-Defamation League), “London Semester
Abroad” and “Study Abroad” (introductions to our many study abroad programs),
“Getting Around CSULB” (information on parking and alternative transportation),
“Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: You Can Make a
Difference” (an introduction to the CSULB Recycling Center), and "The Best
of Times," produced by CSULB Alumni Relations. These videos vary in
length; for running times and descriptions of the content of the purchased
videos, please see Appendix H. Additional videotapes are available for
instructor use in the classroom at the Multicultural Center. Program policy limits video and media
presentations in University 100 class sections to a total of no more than one
and one-half hours.
F.
Anticipated Changes in the Curriculum
Established in 1981, University 100 is a now mature program that has made very efficient use of the single unit and fifteen contact hours that it has for classroom instruction. Over the years, faculty have developed and refined the curriculum, and that process continues to this day. While no specific changes in the course curriculum are currently planned, the curriculum will continue to be "tweaked" as new problems and issues arise which are of importance to the life of the university and the success of new students. The University 100 Program and course will continue the process already begun of integration into our University-wide effort to assure a smooth transition for students to university life and work during their first year. The Program looks forward, for instance, to its participation in the Beach Beginnings effort of the College of Liberal Arts in the 2002-2003 academic year. It seems likely that the rate of change in the Program's library training component and materials will slow. In the last Program self-study, it was noted that as a result of the extensive and ongoing reorganization of the library and its implementation of new technology, the library text would need revision every semester for several years. The goal then was to achieve a schedule of annual revisions of the library text. The Program does now revise the course library materials on an annual basis. The last self-study noted the need to integrate the library component curriculum more closely with the classroom curriculum so that the library component is not perceived by students as merely an unrelated adjunct to the classroom component. It was suggested that a librarian sit on the Program's Faculty Advisory Committee to help effect this integration. In recent years, a librarian has been appointed to the Faculty Advisory Committee but has seldom been in attendance. Since last academic year (AY2000-01), instructors have passed out AND collected library assignments, giving students more of a sense of instructor involvement in the library component. Still, coordination between the library and the University 100 Program could be considerably improved and needs to be worked on in the semesters just ahead. Librarians revising Library Matters, for instance, have not coordinated their efforts with the overall editor of the text (the Director of University 100), despite requests that they do so. Further, the current library materials, though pedagogically effective, seem as much intended to address the needs of the general student population and the public as our incoming freshmen (the Library copyrights its own materials and sells them separately at its copy center as a general guide to the Library for all Library patrons). This has tended to work against the hope expressed in the last self-study that there might be better integration of the library and classroom components of University 100.
III. Faculty
A.
Distribution of the Faculty (by rank)
Instructors who teach in the University
100 program are recruited from across the University and thus bring to the
Program the broadest possible perspective on the university experience. All seven of the University's colleges are
represented. From Fall semester 1996
through Summer semester, 2001, instructors taught a total of 626 course
sections. During this time, a total of
98 instructors taught in the Program.
552 course sections were taught by faculty (88%) and 74 (12%) were
taught by Senior Staff and Administrators. (See list of instructors and full
instructor demographics in Appendix I.)
B.
Distribution of the Faculty (by gender, race, and ethnicity)
New Program instructors are periodically
recruited from the faculty (see recruitment letter in Appexdix A). Faculty are
recruited based on their expressed interest in teaching the course and upon
recommendation by their colleagues, chairs and deans. Of the 98 instructors who taught in the Program from Fall 1996
through Summer 2001, 55% (54) were female and 45% (44) were male. By race, 70 of the 98 faculty (71.4%) were
white, 11 (11.2%) were Hispanic, 6 (6.1%) were African American, 4 (4.1%) were
East Indian, 3 (3.1%) were Asian American, 3 (3.1%) were Arab American, and 1
(1%) was Native American. For the 2001-02 academic year just completed, out of
60 faculty who taught in the Program, 43 (71.6%) were white, 7 (11.6%) were
African American, 4 (6.7%) were Hispanic, 3 (5%) were East Indian, 1 (1.7%) was
Asian American, 1 (1.7%) was Arab American, and 1 (1.7%) was Native
American. In Fall, AY 2001/02, 109
sections are being offered -- 75.1% of total sections being offered by
University 100 during the academic year.
Of the 62 instructors thus far scheduled to teach in University 100 in
AY 2001-02, 50% are female and 50% are male.
69.4% (43) of instructors in AY 2001-02 are White, 13% (8) are African
American, 4.8% (3) are Hispanic, 4.8% (3) are Indian American, 3.2% (2) are
Native American, 2 (3.2%) are Asian-American and 1.6% (1) is
Arab-American. (See list of instructors and full instructor demographics in Appendix I.)
University 100 does not use teaching
assistants, as such, but, as described in Section II above, has since the fall
1990 semester enrolled junior- and senior-level students in University 400
where they assist faculty by giving classroom presentations on a number of
subjects. These students (peer
teachers) are recommended by student services personnel and by faculty. Many have been SOAR advisors, Associated Students
officers, or honor students. They are
chosen for their expertise in either a specific subject or general knowledge as
an advanced student. Such topics as
AIDS awareness, general education requirements, parking, involvement in student
organizations, multi-cultural sensitivity, and learning and physical
disabilities have been the focus of their presentations. The peer teachers are trained and supervised
by a faculty member and are required to write a critical essay which reviews
and assesses the themes in the University 100 course texts. They are evaluated by the faculty in whose
class sections they give presentations and by the students in those
sections. Faculty sign up for these
peer teachers on a voluntary basis.
Each peer teacher must participate in the faculty training workshop,
complete fifteen hours of in-class presentations per semester, and write a
final essay responding to issues raised in the course curriculum.
Although this component of the course
was initiated as a corrective for faculty complaints about the loss of
sophomores and juniors in their class discussions (i.e., a more mature
perspective on the university experience), the benefits have come on both
sides. The peer teachers enrolled in
University 400 have found that giving back to freshmen some of the wisdom they
have gained “on their own” has provided a valuable “capstone” to their
education. They are able to reflect on
where they have come from and what they have achieved. They many times continue to “volunteer” to
give University 100 class presentations long after they are receiving any
course credit for doing so.
G.
Professional Growth
The greatest strength of the University
100 Program is the excellence of the faculty who teach in it. The faculty have developed and continue to
revise the collection of readings which comprise the University 100 text by
submitting current newspaper, magazine, and journal articles and by writing
original articles for consideration by the text's Editor and the Faculty
Advisory Committee; the faculty frequently make suggestions on new and timely
themes to be added to the curriculum; the faculty are generous in sharing with
each other teaching techniques which engage students in the curriculum; and the
faculty continue to maintain a level of enthusiasm for the course which gives
it a rare vitality.
Program instructors attend a three-hour
administrative and pedagogical retreat at the beginning of each semester. Instructors come to the Program from across
the University and these meetings were initiated in Fall, 1981, as a way to get
instructors on the same "pedagogical wavelength" while learning from
each others' different strengths and styles. The retreats have also provided an
opportunity to discuss the administrative and pedagogical processes necessary
for the managing of a large multi-section course that enrolls thousands of
students annually. The meetings have sometimes focused on a single pedagogical
issue and have covered such topics as handling discriminatory attitudes in the
classroom, enhancing the writing skills of new students, integrating new
technologies into the classroom experience, discovering successful classroom
discussion techniques, and utilizing CSULB services to augment the classroom
experience. Instructors have mostly
found these meetings useful and stimulating, enough so that they often express
disappointment when unable to attend.
Many have said that the meeting helps them to begin each semester with a
renewed sense of enthusiasm for the course and their role as teachers and
mentors of new students.
In the past, the program has paid for
some faculty to make presentations at national Freshman Year Experience
conferences. Faculty have spoken on
such topics as “Teaching to Diversity: Family Education History in CSULB
Freshmen,” “From Diversity to a Common Discourse: Methods to Teach the Tools,”
“Tapping Hidden Resources: Using Juniors and Seniors as Discussion Leaders in
Freshman Year Experience Courses,” “Teaching An Understanding of Diversity
Through Images and Music,” and “Be Your Own Publisher: Creating a Customized
Orientation Text for New Students.” In
the period under review, the Program has not formally sponsored attendance at
the Freshman Year Experience Conferences. (Former Director Olson did present
the results of the quantitative study of the Program, but her attendance was
sponsored by Academic Affairs.) FYE
Conferences, of course, are very expensive (nearly $500 for registration alone)
and for much of the period under review it has been difficult to justify such
an expense when the Program was underfunded and when many were also noting that
the FYE Conferences had a certain unhelpful sameness about them on repeated
exposure. Too, in recent years, our University 100 instructors have been busy
on campus with first year issues. Very
many of our University 100 instructors, for instance, have importantly
participated in the University-wide effort undertaken in the period under
review to more effectively coordinate all aspects of the freshman year to
better assure the success of our students.
H. Teaching
Evaluation
University 100 does not use the standard
University questionnaire. In 1981, when
the course was first implemented, it was determined by the Office of Faculty
and Staff Relations that, since faculty who teach in the program are teaching
outside their disciplines, it would not be possible to evaluate them using the
standard evaluation form. It was also
decided that teaching in the program was outside of the formal RTP process,
although untenured faculty then and now include copies of University 100 course
evaluations with their RTP materials.
A non-quantitative, narrative evaluation
instrument was developed by the faculty of University 100 to evaluate both the
course itself and their teaching of it.
Students are asked to describe the purpose of the course, the
helpfulness of the readings in understanding the concepts discussed in the
course, the helpfulness of in-class discussions in understanding the concepts
of the course, the helpfulness of the instructor in integrating the readings
and the discussions so that the purpose of the course is clear, activities they
liked most about the course, and new information or insights they have
acquired. (See Appendix J for a copy of
the course evaluation.)
These evaluations are collected by
instructors at the end of the last class meeting and are then returned to the
University 100 office. They are used by
the Director to help evaluate the consistency of classroom instruction across
the Program's many course sections and the effectiveness of instruction in the
Program. Instructors have found this
evaluation a useful assist in determining the effectiveness of their teaching
and in improving their pedagogy.
IV. Program
Assessment
A. How does the Program attempt to assess
quality?
Faculty effectiveness and Program
quality is not evaluated using the official university standard evaluation form
but with a course evaluation specifically designed by the Program for
University 100. This course evaluation
is non-quantitative and has remained substantially the same since the inception
of the Program. (Proposed changes to
the evaluation have never seemed of sufficient advantage to outweigh the
disadvantage of losing the years long baseline that the collected responses
represent.) Over the past two years,
the Director of University 100, the U100 Faculty Advisory Committee and
University 100 Program staff have explored the possibility of developing a
quantitative instrument to supplement the current evaluation. Finding a cost-effective and useful quantitative
evaluation has proven difficult. In years past, University 100 Program
administrators were told that the Program could not use the standard University
course evaluation as it was not contractually permissible for faculty to be
evaluated outside the disciplinary areas in which they had been hired. The current Program Director has been told
more recently, however, that under the current agreement with the faculty union
this is no longer a problem. Even so, the
current quantitative evaluation used University-wide is finally not suitable for
University 100 as fewer than half the questions on that evaluation are
appropriate for University 100 classes.
Further, when Institutional Research was approached about the
possibility of using standard course evaluations in University 100 classes, there
was some resistance on the grounds that that Institutional Research is not and
has never been budgeted for such a purpose and, too, that the logistics would
be nightmarish, given the odd schedule (from the perspective of Institutional
Research) on which University 100 courses are offered. Indeed, getting quantitative evaluations to
and from 4,000+ students is costly -- if the University 100 Program were to go
it alone, designing its own evaluations and leasing the equipment to scan them,
the cost would be thousands of dollars per year. Scantron forms alone would cost over $2000.00. There may, however, be a better solution on
the horizon. The FPPC has piloted the
use of a commercial quantitative evaluation form, the IDEA evaluation, in a
range of courses on campus, and will shortly recommend its adoption by the
University. The IDEA evaluation has a
larger percentage of standard questions that are appropriate for University 100
classes, and it also allows Programs and Departments to add their own questions
to the evaluation. The University 100
Program very much supports this new evaluation instrument and looks forward to
its use in Program classes. It is the position of the Director, the Faculty
Advisory Committee, and the faculty of University 100 that the University
should fund quantitative evaluations for University
100, just as it does for all other academic courses
offered by the University.
Over the twenty years that the University 100 Program
has been in operation, students completing Program evaluations have with near
unanimity given their highest praise to the Program and its instructors. A packet of representative evaluations from
Fall semester, 2001 is included with this report in Appendix K. All
student evaluations completed in the past 15 years are available for
examination.
b. How does
the Program assess its students?
In the period under review, Sharon Olson, former
Director of University 100 and Gerard Hanley, former Director of the Faculty
Development Center, published Preparing
Incoming Students for the University Educational Process: From the Students'
Perspective and Retrospective, a statistical study of CSULB's University
100 Program in the Journal of the Freshman Year Experience and
Students in Transition (1996, Volume 8, Number 1). In part an assessment of University 100
Program quality, it also, and centrally, assessed student outcomes. Here is the abstract of the Hanley and Olson
study:
Abstract. Universities are developing academic
programs to help prepare incoming students for the expectations and demands of
a university educational process. The
present study evaluated the effectiveness of one such program called University
100 that has been functioning at California State University, Long Beach for
over 14 years. Both narrative and
quantitative assessments were made by approximately 1,100 incoming students and
by approximately 80 students who took University 100 one to three years
earlier. The students' perspective and
retrospective judgements indicated that University 100 was very successful in
achieving the program's goals and preparing them to deal with university-level
work and its educational processes.
Factor analyses found three key elements to the program: what was
taught, how it was taught, and the support for personal, psychological, and
attitudinal changes. Also reviewed are the next steps that California State
University, Long Beach has taken to develop effective academic programs for
incoming students.
Hanley and Olson found that University 100 is a very
effective program for incoming freshmen, but less useful for students with a
substantial amount of college experience.
As University 100 is now a freshman course, the question of its utility
for juniors and seniors is moot. The
good news is that, in every way that they parsed their data, University 100 was
considered by incoming students to be extremely helpful. The
full Hanley and Olson study is included with this report in Appendix L.
The Program made its classes available in Fall, 1998,
for a survey of the writing skills of incoming Freshmen conducted by the
Learning Assistance Center. The LAC
discovered that while one-third of our incoming students were wonderfully
prepared for college-level work, just over 30% were reading at less than a 9th
grade level. The Director of University
100 has spoken to Dr. Genevieve Ramirez, Director of the Learning Assistance
Center, about co-sponsoring and sharing costs for a similar study in the Fall
of 2002. The initial decision has been
made to go forward with the study, assuming funding can be worked out.
University 100 instructors have made considerable pedagogical use of the excellent Mandatory Advising Surveys conducted by the Academic Advising Center. Since mandatory advising for all freshmen was implemented four years ago, Academic Advising has surveyed all freshmen halfway through their first semester at CSULB. University 100 instructors have done their best to highlight for students in their classes the fundamental disconnects between faculty expectations and student expectations that were discovered in the surveys. While faculty, for instance, assume students will be studying 2-3 hours out of class for each hour in class (and thus 30-45 hours per week for a student with a 15 unit load), only 2.9% of freshmen were studying 20 hours or more per week when surveyed. 65.8% of freshmen were studying 10 hours or less, and an astonishing 23.1% were studying 0-5 hours per week! Many students were working at jobs, of course, with 30% of freshmen in Fall, 2000, working 20 hours or more per week. A summary of the data from the Mandatory Advising Surveys is included in Appendix M.
Data from the CIRP (Cooperative Institutional Research
Program) Freshman Surveys conducted annually by UCLA's Higher Education
Research Institute is distributed to Program instructors and used by them in
the classroom. In Fall 2000, over
404,000 students completed the CIRP Freshman Survey at 717 participating
institutions nationwide. Surveys from those institutions providing the most
representative samples were used to compute national norms, which are
statistically adjusted to represent the nation's total population of
approximately 1.64 million first-time, full-time freshmen. It is always interesting to students to see
how they compare with freshmen nationally, and useful for instructors to see
how their students are changing from year to year.
The most Program relevant data from the annual Almanac Issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education is distributed to faculty, as well. The Chronicle data is typically an
especially useful supplement for the "current issues" section of the
University 100 course, though it also profiles undergraduates generally, and
freshmen in particular.
CSULB Institutional Research has made a packet of data
available for inclusion in this self-study.
This data is found in Appendix
N, and includes statistics on
the ethnic diversity of enrolled students, enrolled student workload, the
number of classroom sections offered before and after 4 PM, and course FTES
V. Support Services
A. Library
and Instructional Media
Library
and instructional media support are sufficient for the needs of the Program.
University 100 is given no library acquisitions budget, of course. The Program does maintain a small library
for the use of instructors, but the course text, which is revised annually, and
packets of ancillary materials given to instructors each semester, are
sufficient for both the initial construction of the course and for keeping the
course current and up to date. As a Program offering a one-unit course and
having only 15 contact hours per student, University 100 instructors cannot
allot much class time to video or media presentations. The Program maintains a small collection of
videos that can be used in its classes.
Faculty may add to these as pedagogically appropriate (the Program
provides its instructors with a detailed listing of the video collection of the
Multicultural Center, for instance), but video and media usage in the classroom
cannot exceed a total of one and one half hours, as specified in Program policy
and the University 100 Standard Course Outline.
Since the inception of the Program in 1981, the
symbiotic relationship between the Library Instruction Office (LIO) and the
University 100 office has been a beneficial one, with each party contributing
greatly toward the goal of mutual growth.
Approximately one-third of the University 100 course grade consists of a
self-directed library component geared toward our students' mastery of
University Library information resources. The availability of these resources
to students—especially the availability of services at the Library Instruction
Office (LIO)—are of vital importance to the Program. The technical processing
of students' library component assignments - which are submitted to course
instructors by students on Scantron forms at the end of the third class meeting
- is performed by the LIO using both software (PARSCORE) and hardware made
available to the university community by Academic Computing Services. The entering of
students' classroom component scores — which comprise two-thirds of their final
course grades — is done by University 100 staff directly into PARSCORE; once
both component scores are entered for a student, a final course grade is
generated by University 100 staff which is reported to Enrollment Services at
the end of the semester.
The
Program wishes to note that the administrative and logistical excellence of the
library component of University 100 is in very large part the result of the
organizational skill, precise record keeping, and dedication of Della Pulley,
the LIO staff person.
B. Clerical,
Technical, and Student Assistant Support
From 1988 to 1995, the Director of University 100 was a talented, very capable staff member who was on campus throughout the day and able to give as much of her time as necessary to the operation of University 100. In addition to the Director, the Program also employed at that time a half-time Clerical Assistant II, the equivalent of the current Administrative Support Assistant II. the smooth operation of the Program required only the services of a student assistant. Since the Fall semester, 1995, the Program Director has been a faculty member who is given a mere three units of release time per semester to manage the Program. The single University 100 staff position thus becomes very important and the appropriate classification and compensation of the staff position is of great importance for the stability of the Program. Currently, the Program administrative assistant, Andrew Redmayne, is an Administrative Support Coordinator I, when he should most clearly be classified as an Administrative Support Coordinator II. The Program Director is working to rectify this situation. ("Classification and Qualification Standards for both ASC I and ASC II are included in Appendix O.) The Library Instruction Office has assigned one Library Assistant and a Student Assistant to coordinate on a part-time basis the Library's operation of the University 100 library component. The current level of support is adequate to maintain efficient operation of the library component.
At the beginning of the period under review, the
University 100 Program operated out of ED1-Room 50, a very small room. The
Program also had at that time a small bit of shared storage space in a College
of Education storage closet. In 1996,
University 100 moved to Library East 127, where two small carrels (approximately
36 square feet) were made available for the use of the Program. All the files
and records of the Program, as well as many years of student evaluations and
accumulated course support materials had to be stored (well, shoehorned) into
the Director's office in the Department of Religious Studies which he shared
with 5 part-time lecturers. The Program
was assured that this woefully inadequate arrangement would be of only very
short duration -- a month or two at most.
The Program moved again in AY 1999-2000 -- this time to nearly adequate quarters
in the same suite of offices, LIBE-127.
What the Program needs now is a bit of storage space anywhere on campus,
but preferably on upper campus. The
Director is currently chair of his academic department, and until the end of AY
2001-2002 will have an unshared office in the Department of Religious Studies
in Macintosh Humanities Building. For
2002-2003, however, he is having to assign the new faculty member being hired
by his department in this academic year to his office, and thus will be sharing
an office again. By Fall, 2002, the
University 100 Program files, evaluations and course support materials stored
in his office will have to be moved elsewhere.
VI. Functioning of the Undergraduate Program
E. Procedures
to Coordinate the Content of Multi-Section Courses
The goals statement developed by Program faculty in 1982 for the University 100 course remains the touchstone for pedagogical coordination. In 1997, a University 100 Standard Course Outline that makes explicit the perameters within which the course must be taught was developed with the broad participation of the Program's instructors and approved by the University 100 Faculty Advisory Committee. This standard course outline is distributed to all University 100 instructors when they first come into the Program. It is redistributed to all instructors whenever it is revised. A faculty manual that includes the pedagogical requirements of the Program is distributed to all faculty and is revised each academic year. (see Appendix D for the Goals Statement, the Standard Course Outline and the Faculty Manual) The Director of University 100 gives new instructors a detailed pedagogical orientation to the course. The discursive course evaluation has been designed to assess the ongoing and effective coordination of the course across many sections. Finally, the Fall and Spring presemester pedagogical and administrative meetings are used in part to insure the coordination of University 100 class sections. Instructors in the program are uncommonly ready not only to share successful techniques for the accomplishment of the course goals but to invest time in development of the curriculum. They truly care about the successful transition of new students and are selected to teach University 100 because they are among the finest instructors on campus.
VII. The 1996 PEP Review of University 100
A. Which
recommendations have been implemented?
Which recommendations have not been implemented?
In its last review of the University 100
Program, the PEP Council recommended that the University administration:
"continue to seek ways to enhance funding of the
Program. Currently, the University 100
Program is faced with a lack of full funding by the University. Of the 94 sections offered by the Program in
1995-96, only 60 are funded by the University, the remaining 34 being financed
by the sale of the course text, which is perceived as expensive by
students."
Since AY 2000-2001, University 100 course sections
have been fully funded from the General Fund.
The Program would very much like to have its staff position funded from
the General Fund, as well. Funding its
utterly essential staff position from the sales of the Program's course text
does not give the Program the staffing stability it must have. Further, the University 100 staff position is
properly an ASC II, not an ASC I, and funding an ASC II solely from the sales
of a self-published course text will be difficult, if not impossible.
The PEP Council recommended that the University 100 Program "review the methodology used in evaluating faculty who participate in the Program" and asked the Program to "conduct a 'customer satisfaction' survey to receive candid input from the students regarding the effectiveness of the curriculum and the teaching." Assessment methodology is under constant review within the Program, and though it is much more than that, the Hanley and Olson study surely constitutes in part a "customer satisfaction survey." Further, the current University 100 Program evaluation does indeed elicit candid input from students regarding the effectiveness of the curriculum and the teaching. What the Program needs is not the "one-shot miracle" study of student satisfaction suggested by the PEP Council in 1996, but a regular quantitative instrument funded by the University that is used in all University 100 classes every semester. It is only with such an instrument that the Program will develop the necessary statistical baseline against which to measure its success. Thus, the University 100 Program urges the current PEP Council to support the proposed use of the IDEA evaluation both University-wide and in all University 100 classes.
The PEP Council recommended in 1996 that
the Program "review the curriculum so that difficult issues such as
rights, roles and responsibilities of faculty and students are thoroughly
covered." (Underlining in original)
Our University 100 course curriculum has addressed difficult issues
since its inception, and instructors are as thorough as humanly possible within
the constraints of a one-unit course.
[1] Betsy Barefoot, "Exploring the Evidence: Reporting Outcomes of First-Year Seminars, Volume II," Number 25, Monograph Series, The National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, University of South Carolina, 1998.
[2] Providing for Progress: California Higher Education Enrollment Demand and Resources into the 21st Century, Commission Report 00-1, California Postsecondary Education Commission, February, 2000. Available online at http://www.cpec.ca.gov/
[3] Ernest Boyer, College: The Undergraduate Experience in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), p. 43 as quoted in Barefoot and Fidler, Exploring the Evidence: Reporting Outcomes of Freshman Seminars, Number 11, Monograph Series, The National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, University of South Carolina, 1993, p. 7.
[4] There are some sub-sets of these two general types that include academic seminars on variable topics, professional seminars, and basic study skills seminars.
[5] These requests have come from campuses as diverse as Cornell, The University of British Columbia, The University of Texas, Mills College, UCLA, SUNY, community colleges, and other campuses within the CSU system.
[6] Barefoot and Fidler, p. 7.
[7] Data found in Betsy O. Barefoot, Exploring the Evidence: Reporting Outcomes of First-Year Seminars, Volume II, Number 25, Monograph Series, The National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, University of South Carolina, 1998, and Betsy O. Barefoot and Dorothy S. Fidler, Exploring the Evidence: Reporting Outcomes of Freshman Seminars, Number 11, Monograph Series, The National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, University of South Carolina, 1993.