A non-residential senior college of the City University of N.Y. (CUNY), Lehman College serves an ethnically and culturally diverse student body. Committed to its mission of access and excellence, the College, some ten years ago, found itself confronting a student persistence rate of 50% into the third semester. Lehman’s Coordinated Freshman Program (CFP) grew out of an urgency to address the declining retention data and a less than meaningful educational experience in the first year. Students moved tenuously through a fragmented freshman year without a sense of connection, without a cohesive structure that explained how x is related to y - or more to the point - how x and y are related to them. It is no surprise that many of them would flounder and gradually become convinced that they were entangled in an enterprise which was probably hostile and, in any event, had little to do with them. The product: a disturbing attrition rate. The CFP, a comprehensive institutional effort, has - over the last decade - transformed the first-year experience. Consisting of the Freshman Year Initiative and the Summer and Intersession Immersion programs, the CFP constitutes a twelve month continuum of academic and support activities, a cohesive framework that assures student passage from basic skills to sophomore year readiness.

The Freshman Year Initiative (FYI), the academic year program of the CFP, is built on a learning community cohort structure aimed at comprehensive intervention in the overall academic experience of freshmen. Strategies focus on all aspects of the student’s experience at the College. Its logistical heart is block programming, based on curricular integration of linked courses - and culminating in an interdisciplinary approach to first-year studies. The academic experience that evolves is thematic and coherent. Any particular link of one course to another is certainly not new in any curricular or pedagogical sense; it is the dynamic of the whole, the totality of the courses in a given block working in concert that modifies, alters and enriches the student experience. The program initiates faculty dialogue and development, and builds awareness of the critical importance of integrating first-year students into the college community. The learning communities that emerge are based on curriculum restructuring efforts and help to foster greater intellectual connections between students, between students and their faculty, and between disciplines.

The positive effects of this structure -- on student performance, on innovative curriculum, on retention, on graduation rates -- have been well documented in programmatic evaluations. Average GPA’s after the first year have risen from 2.1 (prior to FYI) to a current 2.9; the 50% rate of persistence cited above has increased to a 75% rate into the third semester; 5-year graduation rates have more than doubled since the inception of the Initiative ( 1995 cohort).

The Freshman Year Initiative is, in effect, the freshman year for all full-time entering regular admits and SEEK students. 800 students, representing almost 4000 instructional seats, are enrolled in the 2001 - 2002 program. Participation in the program is wide and inclusive: two hundred faculty from almost all disciplines, Student Affairs professionals, academic advisors, counselors, academic support staff, peer counselors, and administrators across the campus. The Administration has always demonstrated its unqualified support. The scope of involvement is significant and contributes to a sense of community in which students become oriented - and committed - to an active learning environment.

The freshman seminar, embedded in the student program within the block structure and taught by Student Affairs personnel and counselors, addresses the transition from the high school experience to college life. Its general focus is student adjustment to college and associated expectations and responsibilities. Students find a forum here for problem-solving, examine the goals of a liberal arts education, and map out a long range academic plan. Instructional support services play an increasingly critical role in the program. In-class and satellite tutoring activities tied to instruction and University exams - as well as innovative use of technology - are built into the student’s experience.

The overarching objective of the FYI program remains a constant in the midst of its ten-year evolution: to integrate the range of interconnected but seemingly disparate academic and social experiences in the academic life of students. The program will continue to encompass and bring together instruction, counseling, faculty development, mentoring, advisement, peer-tutoring/supplemental instruction and extracurricular activities. The interaction of all these aspects of college life can have an effect of which each, in isolation, is incapable - transforming freshman year fragmentation into a congruent experience.

Prior to enrollment in the Freshman Year Initiative, the entering fall cohort participate in the Summer Immersion program. This component of the CFP constitutes a critical programmatic goal - that entering students (by University mandate) pass all three CUNY assessment tests in order to be eligible for admission at the senior colleges. The testing requirements (operative at Lehman in 2001) create a high stakes environment in the summer months tempered to some degree by an organizing principle, a modified version of the FYI model of blocked courses, which allows customized placement and homogeneous tracks of skills development in writing, reading, and mathematics. This logistical model of Summer Immersion - along with substantial faculty development and a focused pedagogy - proved highly successful in summer 2001: a 90% rate of success for those students aspiring to eligibility at the College. 1000 entering and continuing freshmen enrolled, representing 1450 instructional seats. The effect of Summer Immersion on Fall enrollment was considerable. The effect of the program on student readiness to assume the academic challenges of their first year was equally significant.

The Winter Intersession Immersion program (shaped by greater time constraints) mirrors the larger structure of the Summer for the entering spring cohort in most of its component parts, including faculty development, modified blocks, instructional support, and use of technology. Here, too, skills development was significant. Students achieved a comparable rate of success as those in the Summer program, and established eligibility to enroll in the College and the Freshman Year Initiative in spring 2002.

The freshman year, perhaps the most critical time in a student’s development, is the focal point for educators to begin the dynamic process that shapes and informs the successful learning experience of students. The Coordinated Freshman Program, for the past ten years, has worked toward that end. Lehman’s Freshman Year Initiative has become a prototype in the University and, increasingly, has served as a learning community model beyond the borders of CUNY