Hazard Delving into Differences: A Creative Approach to Incorporating Diversity into FYE

24/F 3:30 PM Hanna

Type_Presentation: 90 Minute Concurrent session

PresentationTitle: Delving Into Differences: A Creative Approach to Incorporating Diversity in to FYE Courses

ProgramStrand_Primary: Freshman Year Experience

ProgramStrand_Secondary: Multicultural Issues

Presentation_description:

This session explores Bryant University's innovative solution to incorporating the complex topic of diversity into their First-Year Experience course. Instructors and students alike felt this topic would be discussed more freely student-to-student, thus a group called the Student Diversity Advocates (SDA) was formed. Administrators and instructors will benefit from examining the components of this unique program.

Session_summary:

Delving Into Differences: A Creative Approach to Incorporating Diversity in to First-Year Experience Courses

According to the 2003 National Survey on First-Year Seminars, approximately 50% of institutions award only one-credit hour for their First-Year Experience (FYE) classes. This translates into roughly fourteen or fifteen instructional hours. As a result, FYE program coordinators are left to grapple with the perennial question in curriculum, “What is most worth knowing?”

What topics should be “covered” within those instructional hours? Of course, the long-established topics of study skills, campus resources, time management, academic planning, and critical thinking skills are inevitably included. What happens though, in an effort to keep up with recent curricular trends, when coordinators feel pressured to include a subject like diversity? How do we incorporate a complex subjects like diversity into our already overburdened one-credit FYE curricula?

Delving into diversity raises a mixture of concerns. Faculty are worried that they don’t know enough about the topic to teach it. In turn, this places stress on coordinators who are responsible for faculty development. Students feel like they’ve already “been there, done that” in high school or other courses. In short, “delving into diversity” presents difficulties. This session will be useful to FYE curriculum coordinators, administrators, and instructors.

At Bryant University, the fourth curricular goal of the FYE course emphasizes “understanding the importance of respecting diversity.” So we asked the question, “How do we as instructors meet this lofty goal and how do we get students to come to this understanding?” When polled, instructors and students alike felt this topic would be explored more freely “student to student.” Consequently, in the fall of 2005, a group called the Student Diversity Advocates (SDA) was formed. SDA’s visit the FYE classes to conduct diversity exercises. During the class visits, SDA’s moderate activities with fellow students to talk about topics such as diversity resources on campus, individual diversity, personal values, perceptions of self, and community and cultural values. This session will explore our innovative solution to delving into diversity. Participants will learn how this student group was formed, and how SDA’s are recruited, hired, trained and assessed. Packets for participants will include information such as recruiting and hiring materials, training hand-outs, and assessment tools. Institution wide benefits will be discussed and assessment results will be shared.

PresenterBio:

Laurie holds an Ed.M. in Counseling and an Ed.D. in Curriculum and Teaching from Boston University. She has been the Director of the Academic Center for Excellence and Writing Center at Bryant University for the last nine years. She has been the Curriculum Coordinator for Foundations for Learning, Bryant’s FYE class, for the past five years.

Laurie’s experience of teaching and designing curricula for first-year experience and study skills courses spans eighteen years. Her area of expertise is the personality traits and attitudes of college students that influence academic achievement and mediate the utilization of newly learned study strategies. Laurie has taught courses in college reading and study skills, liberal arts seminars, psychology, personality psychology, abnormal psychology, and social psychology.

Laurie is a New England Peer Tutor Association Board member and has hosted their Annual Forum at her institution. She has presented at national conferences such as the CRLA and the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition. Laurie is an award winning educator. In 2006, she won the Learning Assistance Association of New England’s Outstanding Research and Publication Award. In 2006, Laurie was named one of the Top 10 Outstanding First-Year Student Advocates. The award is co-sponsored by the University of South Carolina's National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition and the Houghton Mifflin Company as part of their annual campaign to recognize Outstanding First-Year Student Advocates.

Laurie co-authored a text entitled Foundations for Learning designed for study skills and first-year experience courses. The second edition has recently been published with a new chapter on the topic of diversity. She has done a great deal of work assessing the effectiveness of learning assistance programs and FYE courses. One assessment piece appears in Exploring the Evidence, Volume III: Reporting Outcomes of First-Year Seminars, a monograph published by the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition.