2006 First Year Academies Update

LaGuardia's First Year Academy program seeks to extend the benefits of interdisciplinary learning communities to all LaGuardia students, including those required to take developmental skills courses. The First Year Academy also provides a platform for introducing students to their ePortfolios. Though LaGuardia students have high goals, they are also in great need of Basic Skills courses. Only 13 percent of our entering students do not require any Basic Skills courses, in contrast, 39 percent of our students need basic skills in two areas. In writing, 47 percent of our students need to take a Basic Writing Course. In order to best serve students, faculty at LaGuardia have sought different ways to engage basic skills students in the college community, since these are the students who most often feel disenfranchised from the life of the college. All students entering the City University of New York must demonstrate proficiency in Reading, Writing and Math. Students can demonstrate proficiency by entering CUNY with a 75 on the New York State Regents Exam in English, 480 verbal on the SAT, or an ACT English score of 20 or higher. If a student has not demonstrated proficiency in one of these three ways, they must take a CUNY Skills Assessment Test. For example, in writing, students must take the CUNY/ACT exam. This 60 minute writing sample assesses students' writing skills by asking them to write " an organized, focused essay." The prompt for this exam, "describes a choice that a person in a position of authority must make between two alternatives. The writer is asked to advise the authority on the best choice and explain why the group should agree with the writer's position." To be deemed proficient in writing, students must earn a 7 (on a 12 point scale). A student who does not pass the CUNY/ACT exam is placed into a Basic Writing Course. At LaGuardia Community College, this course is most often, Basic Writing, English 099. As Basic Writers, students at LaGuardia receive 5 hours of writing instruction- 4 hours in traditional classroom space taught by faculty and 1 hour in a Basic Writing Lab taught by a tutor from the LaGuardia CC Writing Center. In order to successfully pass Basic Writing, students must pass an exit exam designed by English faculty and graded by two English faculty members. In order to move to English 101, students must also pass a retest of the CUNY/ACT exam. It was through this desire to engage our Basic Skills students in the life of the college that the First Year Experience Academies were born The First Year Academy Learning Communities is one of the most exciting and challenging projects undertaken at LaGuardia Community College in many years. Its ambitious goals are to recontextualize basic skills education, to better acculturate first year students to college life, and to help them connect to the college community--all of which will improve student retention and success. Bringing together the best of LaGuardia's history--drawing on the college's expertise around learning communities, Basic Skills instruction and First Year Experience--with the promising new practice of ePortfolio Instruction, the First Year Academies began in 2003, growing out of three college-based task initiatives: the Basic Skills Task Force, the Student Enrollment Management Task Force and the ePortfolio Initiative. When fully operational the First Year Academies will encompass four thematically linked courses: New Student Seminar, Fundamentals of Professional Advancement (a Cooperative Education course), a Specialized Basic Skills course, and an Introductory Course in the appropriate major. Developed by a faculty committee, the Academy structure provides students with a more cohesive academic experience and allows basic-skills students to move more quickly toward substantial engagement with content courses. When the program is fully operational, new students will select one of three academies (Technology/Business, Liberal Arts, or Allied Health and Sciences) and take courses designed by faculty to reflect the themes of that Academy. For example, students in the Business/Technology Academy will take Introduction to Business or Computers, a specially themed developmental English course, and a specially themed New Student Seminar in their first semester; in their second semester, they'll take a Fundamentals of Professional Advancement Seminar for Business/Technology students. In both semesters, students also take a Studio Hour where they build electronic student portfolios (ePortfolios) to showcase their work in all of their Academy classes. Their Introduction to Computers course or Introduction to Business course is able to build on and reinforce the foundation laid in these other Academy courses. The Basic Skills faculty is able to recontextualize writing as a practice associated with the major. The New Student Seminar provides support for students in critical areas such as study skills, course planning, and career planning. The First Year Academies' Structure includes: College within a college First Year Experience as a year-long package Full intake program--advising, counseling, career development, co-curriculars Focus on curriculum and expanding LaGuardia's success with learning communities, basic skills courses, and First Year Experience Year-long faculty development process An organizing framework for first-year advisement, orientation, and student professional development activities An organizing framework to help expand/build upon our learning community program A locus for cross-disciplinary faculty collaboration Sample First Year Academy Themes include: Beyond Dr. Phil: Psychology and Communication in the 21st Century Hurting, Helping, Healing Bright Lights, Big City: Survival in a New Economy Truth, Reality and You CyberPlanet: Connections between Business and Technology American Dreams/American Realities History of First Year Academy Learning Communities The Basic Skills faculty redesigned their courses in order to participate in the Business/Technology Academy. Non-academy sections of developmental English often use themes or topics connected to a particular text book. Students enrolled in these sections do not sign up for the section based on the faculty member's theme as these are not published as part of the course catalog. Accordingly, business students could end up in an English 099 course sub-titled "American Dreams/American Realities" which focuses on themes of immigration and assimilation. Instead, in the Academy, English 099 faculty are encouraged to rethink their courses, using the content material in the Introduction to the Major course as a touchstone for their own work. Themes in the Business/Technology Academy ranged from "You Are What You Buy: Consumerism and Identity in American Culture" to "Technology Then, Technology Now." The faculty worked to select texts such as Jim Munroe's Everyone in Silico, Max Barry's Jennifer Government and Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed that would support the themes, vocabulary and concepts students learned in their major courses. Often, the links across the Academy were cognitive. Many faculty chose not to teach selections from the Business or Computer texts, but actively referred to key concepts and vocabulary as part of their class discussions. Additionally, through the other courses in the Academy, students received additional support in writing and college-level study skills. In 2003-2004, 20 faculty from around the college met to begin planning LaGuardia's new First Year Academies for Business and Technology. The Business/Technology Academy premiered in the Spring of 2004. In 2004-2005, the Business/Technology Academy faculty continued in a second pilot year. 20 new faculty from Allied Health and Liberal Arts came together to begin planning 2 additional Academies in a year-long faculty development process. In 2005-2006, all three academies continued at their current size. We did not make appreciable gains in enrollment. This speaks to the continuing struggle of students who need increasingly part-time schedules and to the challenges of refocusing the institution's services to support the First Year Academies. Despite the lack of expansion in the First Year Academies, the learning communities continue to offer a crucial site of supported and integrated learning in a student's first year. The three academies are all well-established now with a core of dedicated faculty interested in expanding a student's education beyond a single subject matter. The ePortfolio continues to provide the central connection between the courses and students have become increasingly articulate in how they understand the connections between courses. In 2006-2007, we will continue to offer the current slate of First Year Academy Learning Communities and we will continue to examine ways to grow the program further. First Year Academy Learning Communities First Year Experience