Academic Affairs and Student Life Collaboration in St. Lawrence s First-Year Program

1. Academic Affairs and Student Life Collaboration in St. Lawrence’s First-Year Program Steven Horwitz Associate Dean of the First Year St. Lawrence University

2. History of the FYP Campus challenges in early and mid-80s Program piloted for a couple of years, mandatory in 88-89 A faculty initiative that the administration eventually bought into Highly controversial, much less so now Has evolved in response to faculty and student feedback

3. Goals of the FYP Program designed to meet four goals: General education Communication skills Academic advising Student Life-Academic Affairs partnership Greek life/alcohol Lack of respect for diversity concerns Anti-intellectualism Note absence of retention

4. Structure of the FYP Campus of 2000 – 560 first-years Year-long program, with distinct fall and spring components Fall: broken up into about 18 “colleges” of 32 Each college is a residentially-based course Team-taught by two faculty and inter-disciplinary around a substantive academic topic Focus on communication/crit thinking skills via the topic – 50% more contact hours than normal course Faculty are their academic advisers Faculty work with residential staff to integrate the living and learning

5. Structure of the FYP Selection process over summer Academic advising begins then too ADFY works with RLC staff to match housing and course Community assistants intentionally chosen Communication skills mentors also View the college faculty, CAs, mentor, and Residential Coordinator as the college “staff” Meet as a team every two weeks (in theory)

6. Structure of the FYP Spring course is a more traditional First-Year Seminar Non-residential, but still 50% more contact hours for communication skills, specifically research Administrative structure ADFY reports to VP Academic Affairs Weak dotted line to VP Student Life Dir. of RLC reports to VP Student Life Collaboration between these two is key, as is a good relationship between the two VPs Reality: collaboration below the VP level is the shop floor

7. Faculty participation in the FYP Faculty participation Over half the current faculty have participated The “big lure” Effect on faculty development and pedagogy Effect on their perceptions of student life professionals Student life staff have taught in the program as well

8. Challenges for collaboration Range of faculty commitment to the residential component How do we get faculty to buy into this work? Constantly remembering to BE collaborative Remember to use that “cc:”

9. Challenges for collaboration AA and SL cultural differences Ongoing struggles with “confidentiality” Dean of Student Life’s obligation to all students; faculty tend to see “good guys” and “bad guys” Faculty love a good argument – SL professionals are much less comfortable Challenge for SL staff in working with faculty, especially with controversial issues SL staff are used to working collaboratively, faculty less so Reminding faculty that SL staff are educators too Reminding SL staff that faculty care about the whole student Reminding everyone that it’s about learning “Faculty centered”? “Student centered”? Learning centered!