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First Year-Experience (FYE)

Program Overview

The First-Year Experience (FYE) at DSU helps students become independent learners able to articulate and successfully pursue their own educational and personal goals. While not all students’ definition of success is defined by degree attainment, the FYE at DSU seeks to promote retention and persistence for those students who aspire to attain a degree.

The FYE helps ensure student success by fostering students’ intellectual and social growth. With respect to intellectual growth, the FYE challenges students to develop the abilities and skills necessary for deeper learning including appropriate study skills and strategies, critical thinking, scholarly inquiry, and communication (both written and oral). With respect to social growth, the FYE challenges students to develop the skills and abilities necessary for life in a complex, multicultural, and globalized world including problem-solving, a coherent set of values and ethics, sense of control and responsibilities for choices, and self-awareness of one’s worldview and appreciation for the worldview of others.

The FYE at DSU is a period of transition for students to the postsecondary education experience. It begins before their arrival on campus with the information they receive as part of recruitment and orientation. The FYE program also includes the Freshman Seminar course and freshman learning communities. It is essential during this transition for students to have the benefit of advising and to be engaged through intrusive advising when necessary. Students should also have the opportunity to begin to identify mentors in their field of interest. Students should be encouraged to become involved in the social and academic life of campus in ways that help promote deep and powerful connections, and students should also be encouraged to identify opportunities for service and leadership in the campus and local communities.

Student Orientation, Advisement, and Registration
Student Orientation, Advisement, and Registration (SOAR) marks the formal beginning of the First-Year Experience at DSU and is designed to help students make a successful transition to the university by preparing them for the academic and social challenges that all students face. Click here for a list of SOAR dates.

Freshman Seminar
Freshman Seminar is designed to foster students’ intellectual growth by promoting active and critical thinking, effective study and communication skills, and awareness of campus-based tools and resources for scholarly study and success in college. The course also promotes students’ social growth by promoting self-awareness, responsibility and self-control, ethical behavior, and appreciation of life in a multicultural and globalized world.

All incoming students with 23 or fewer semester hours or less will be required to take ASC 100: Freshman Seminar unless they have completed an equivalent course at another institution.

This one-credit course must be taken during the first year of the freshman year at DSU.

Learning Communities
Learning Communities provide an opportunity for new students to develop connections with a group of students engaged in similar courses of study, either by major field or thematic areas of interest. Learning communities typically are structured to include a Freshman Seminar and a course in which the field or theme can be further explored.

Academic Advising
All new students are assigned a Freshmen Seminar instructor as their academic advisor throughout the first year. Academic advisors will meet with the students on a regular basis to learn more about the students’ interests and aspirations, to provide advice regarding course selection or other academic issues, and to provide support in moving through the transition to college.