Creating a Comprehensive Freshman Year Program

Purpose: to improve retention and academic progress among first-year students.

Language Influences and Shapes Outcome:

Comprehensive: “So large in scope or content as to include much.” (Webster’s Dictionary)

Note: A Freshman Year Program can be comprehensive (including all the parts and pieces) and yet parts can still be walled off in silos (not holistic)

Holistic: "Emphasizing the importance of the whole and the 'interdependence' of its parts." (Webster’s Dictionary)

Note: The shortcomings of being only comprehensive is to be found in the lack of emphasis on ‘interdependence’ of parts.

"Positive interdependence: the quintessential quality that defines collaboration and transforms group work into teamwork." (Joe Cuseo)

The most essential task for creating an effective freshmen year program to improve retention and academic progress among first-year students is not identifying and creating or developing the parts of a comprehensive program, it is developing positive interdependence among those parts (programs, academic support, professional development, education and career planning, administration, faculty, staff, etc.). Now the task becomes, how to foster positive interdependence. Research on collaborative learning has a lot to teach us about how to work as teams, and not just as groups. Again, "positive interdependence: the quintessential quality that defines collaboration and transforms group work into teamwork." (Joe Cuseo)