Why the First-Year Seminar Matters - by Christine Harrington & Theresa Orosz (Paperback)

About the Book

This book examines the critical role that the first-year seminar can play in setting the stage for student success. Authors suggest that the time is right for colleges and universities to re-imagine the first-year seminar course by increasing the focus on career exploration an...

Book Synopsis

This book examines the critical role that the first-year seminar can play in setting the stage for student success. Authors suggest that the time is right for colleges and universities to re-imagine the first-year seminar course by increasing the focus on career exploration and decision-making and addressing key success skills students need.

Review Quotes

Christine Harrington and Theresa Orosz offer a well-researched and compelling argument for increasing college completion by modernizing the First Year Seminar and leveraging it as a core element of Guided Pathways. A worthy read.

Harrington and Orosz provide a compelling case for leveraging the power of first-year seminars to help students choose and work towards a career path. This is an important read for educators desiring to better understand how a first-year seminar can play a pivotal role in the Guided Pathways movement.

Perhaps the most frequently asked question I get from community college educators about guided pathways is: "How do we, with very limited resources for advising, help students explore options for college and careers, choose a program that is a good fit for them, and develop and follow a plan for completing their program?" This book provides the answer. It is deeply informed by the latest research on career and college exploration and planning, but also practical in the guidance it provides. I highly recommend it to colleges seeking to help students develop a sense of purpose and a plan for realizing their goals.

Reform efforts in higher education have approached the challenge of improving student success by accretion--by piling on stand-alone initiatives and creating "initiative fatigue" among those responsible for implementing these initiatives. This book demonstrates how colleges can move beyond initiative addition to initiative integration, resulting in student support that is more:
(a) synergistic--combines separate initiatives (guided pathways and the first-year seminar) to generate a collective, multiplicative impact on student success,
(b) sustainable--builds on a well-supported, proactively-delivered, first-year seminar to generate a long-term educational vocational plan that guides students from college entry to college completion,
(c) scalable--provides intrusive (inescapable) support that reaches the entire student body, and
(d) holistic--supports the student as a "whole person", addressing both academic and "non-academic" (personal) factors that affect student success.

This book is a must read for any professional interested in helping students discover their passion, find a path to their future, and develop a systematic plan for navigating that path.

The combined practical expertise of author Christine Harrington, a nationally known FYS advocate, and co-author Theresa Orosz, an accomplished FYS instructor and community college administrator, positions this book among the few that not only build a strong case for their call to action, but support that case with a clear road map of activities that professionals can undertake. . . . this text is a must-have reference for those seeking to positively impact student success measures at scale, with the idea that FYS is vital to that cause.

This book brings together a solid review of research on the effectiveness of career pathways for college students and a practical guide to linking these pathways into a common student success intervention, the first-year seminar course. It is a must-read for educators seeking ways to maintain both student motivation and understanding of the vital link between college and career.

This is an important book that lands with perfect timing as the guided pathways movement evolves past its initial stages. Authentic career exploration and the matching of student interests to careers is quietly one of most important and most challenging parts of pathways redesign. I also have held publicly for years that first-term/ first-year experience courses either exclusively or primarily targeted toward career exploration are necessary to optimize guided pathways redesign. This book shares important guidance from practitioners who are living this work on the ground, and I highly recommend it to a wide range of community college and four-year faculty, staff and administrators.

About the Author

Christine Harrington is a national expert in student success and teaching and learning. She has been teaching the first-year seminar for almost 20 years at Middlesex County College and is the author of a widely-used first-year seminar textbook, Student Success in College: Doing What Works! 3rd edition which is aligned to Guided Pathways.

Theresa Orosz has 26 years of experience in higher education at Middlesex County College and possesses expertise in the areas of career services, academic advising, and academic and student affairs. She has 10 years of adjunct experience teaching cooperative education courses and the first-year seminar.