History of the First Year Seminar & University 101 Program

New student seminars are special courses for undergraduate students designed to enhance their academic and social integration into college. Based on the data from the 2006 National Survey on First-Year Seminars, sponsored by the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, approximately 84.8% of American colleges and universities offer some type of first-year seminar. The precise content and goals for these seminars differ among institutions. Some are academic seminars, which focus on a faculty member's special area of scholarly interest or an interdisciplinary theme. Others are offered within academic departments or professional schools in order to introduce students to the expectations of an academic major or career. However, the majority of institutions (about 57.9%) offer extended orientation seminars designed to provide students with essential strategies and information to enhance the likelihood of their persistence and academic/social success.

New student seminars have been part of the academic curriculum at American colleges and universities for over 100 years. The first freshman seminar was offered in 1882 at Lee College in Kentucky and the first "for-credit" seminar became part of the curriculum at Reed College in 1911. But the popularity of first-year seminars has fluctuated since that time. After almost disappearing in the 1960s, the first-year seminar has enjoyed a gradual and steady rebirth since the mid-1970s. It is now recognized as an effective way to address many of the issues and problems of contemporary college life. All new student seminars give students the opportunity to interact with and gain support from other students and the seminar instructor. This supportive environment helps create a strong sense of community within the larger campus. Many of these seminars have been broadened in focus to include other categories of first-year students, especially transfer students, who also are students in transition. Hence, many former "freshman" seminars have been reconstituted as "new student" or "first-year" seminars.

The University 101 course at the University of South Carolina was introduced in 1972 as an educational experiment in response to 1970 student riots against the Vietnam War, other perceived social injustices, and local campus issues. The primary goal of the course was to build trust, understanding, and open lines of communication between students, faculty, staff, and administrators. Other key aims in the initial development of the seminar were as follows:

• To encourage students to develop more positive attitudes and behaviors toward the University;
  
  
• To increase student retention to the sophomore year and subsequently through the senior year to graduation;
  
  
• To assist student efforts to understand the multiple, essential purposes of higher education;
  
  
• To facilitate a major faculty development initiative, which would improve teaching in all undergraduate courses, not just the first-year seminar.