Hughes, Deana: President

Being a University President is a goal that has never cross my mind, but if given the chance I would restructure the Freshman Seminar course campus wide into a more efficient vehicle for retention and graduation by creating specialized sections of the course to help students who have declared a major find the facilities and tools on campus to help them in their academic career.

So far this year we have had lessons on The History of Academe, Diversity, Sexual Health, and Stress/Time Management. While this may be pertinent information it is not what we expected from Honors Seminar. During the course we had a brief overview of BlackBoard, the campus e-mail, CampusConnect, and We Are SAU. But there needs to be extensive instruction on how to use them beyond just telling us to look at the online tutorials. They are essential tools that we use every day in classes. We also need a better understanding of Student Support Services, the Tutoring Center, Writing Center, and other locations on campus that exist for our benefit. The Freshman Seminar course should teach us exactly what these facilities do and not just mention that they exist. There should be excursions to these areas to better understand their activities. Perhaps the only aspect of this class that has lived up to expectations is learning about SAU’s different colleges.

As an entering freshman who has already declared a major in Biology, I had expected to be able to work closely with the College of Science and Engineering from the start, but instead I was put into the Academic Advising Center and put on hold which means I could not officially get an advisor from my area of study. Right now, there are two Seminar classes which are the regular Freshman Seminar and the Honors Seminar. As president I would propose that Freshman Seminar be split into five subcategories. There would be a class for undeclared majors which would cover the generalized areas described above and four other seminar classes designed by each college. Each college requires different academic standards, has different facilities, and offers membership in different organizations specialized to their area of study. We student have all been asked to join student organizations, but how do we find an organization that fits our needs? The Science and Engineering Freshman Seminar, for example, would discuss all the other colleges its main focus would be how the classes and organizations offered by itself the other colleges help someone in the scientific field.

Restructuring the course would be a pain, but the benefits outweigh the deficits. Students and instructors alike have complained about finalizing degree plans near graduation. The majority of incoming traditional freshman do not know how to plan for the future. High school students take life one year at a time. College is different; students must plan ahead for all four years. The new Freshman Seminar would help degree planning become less of a hassle and create a cascade effect on retention and graduation rates.