Rationale for Texas A&M-Corpus Christi’s Approach to the First Year

According to Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi’s mission statement, the University is committed to serving the needs of South Texas, and to enrolling and graduating “students of high potential,” especially those from groups which “have been historically under-represented in Texas higher education.” The University can only meet that commitment if its first-year students, who are not always fully prepared for college by their high schools, make successful transitions from high school to the University. The First-Year Learning Communities Program (FYLCP) is designed to help students make those transitions, by involving them in learning communities within which they can effectively adjust, academically and socially, to college life. Those learning communities are characterized in the University’s mission statement as “anchoring” the undergraduate education provided by the institution.

A Brief Description of the FYLCP

A&M-Corpus Christi requires full-time first-year students to enroll in learning communities called “triads” or “tetrads” in each of their first two semesters. A triad is a cluster of three courses which includes 1) a large Core Curriculum lecture course (150-250 students), 2) a Core Curriculum English Composition course (25 students or less), and 3) a First-Year Seminar (25 students or less). Tetrads, like triads, include the three kinds of courses listed above; and they also include a second large Core Curriculum lecture course. Each First-Year Seminar section is paired with an English Composition section in which the same 25 (or less) students are enrolled, and that cohort of students also attends the same triad or tetrad lecture course(s).

The courses within a given triad or tetrad are “linked,” not only in the sense that students enroll in all of them concurrently, but also in the sense that emphasis is placed upon making connections between the courses: teachers of the courses collaborate extensively to design activities and assignments that help students integrate their learning across disciplinary boundaries.

In Seminar sections, the instructors help students to increase their understanding of the material from their lecture course(s), to think critically about that material, and to relate it to ideas and issues drawn from other courses and disciplines. Seminar instructors also help students learn how to learn and, more generally, how to succeed in their first year at the University.

The FYLCP’s comprehensive scope distinguishes it from other learning community programs.

When A&M-Corpus Christi welcomed its initial class of first-year students in Fall 1994, all 400 of the students enrolled in multiple sections within three different tetrads. Since then, the University has maintained its commitment to the FYLCP, expanding its offerings each year to accommodate all full-time first-year students, even as enrollments have increased significantly. In Fall 2001, A&M-Corpus Christi enrolled over 1200 students in eight triads and tetrads.

Implementation of this comprehensive learning communities program requires the efforts and cooperation of faculty, administrators, and staff members from many areas of the University. Administrators from Enrollment Management, the Core Curriculum program, and Advising work together to schedule the tetrads and triads and ensure that students are placed in appropriate learning communities. Faculty from various disciplines teach the Core lecture courses. In First-Year Seminar staff members from Student Affairs, Counseling, and Career Placement give presentations; librarians help students develop research skills; and the Employee Relations staff conducts diversity training sessions.

Evidence of the Effectiveness of the FYLCP

On the National Survey of Student Engagement, A&M-Corpus Christi first-year students scored above the national mean for first-year students on survey items concerning, for example, the frequency with which they integrated ideas from various sources, prepared multiple drafts of a paper, gave class presentations, and had serious conversations with students of a different race or ethnicity.

First-Year Seminar students asked to assess their development with respect to ten skills and abilities (e.g., note taking, reading retention, writing ability, critical thinking) in a pre- and post-survey, reported improvement in all ten areas.

Data collected regarding students in large tetrad lecture courses and students in free-standing (non-linked) versions of the same courses showed that a) course withdrawal rates were much lower among students in the tetrad lecture courses, and b) tetrad students’ grades were higher than non-tetrad students’ grades. These positive effects on course withdrawal rates and grades in the tetrad lectures were strongest among Hispanic students and second strongest among women.

First-year A&M-Corpus Christi students scored above the national mean on a wide variety of items when they took the Noel-Levitz survey of student satisfaction. Those items focused on, for example, the intellectual growth students experience at the University, the quality of instruction they receive, the extent to which faculty care about them, the sense of belonging they feel, and their enjoyment of the experience of being a student at the University.

A&M-Corpus Christi’s retention rate, according to our most recent comparative data (‘98-’99), was the highest in the state among schools in our Carnegie class. In addition, A&M-Corpus Christi retained minority first-year students at roughly the same rates as other students in 98-99 and 99-00. In fact, in 99-00 our retention rates for Hispanic and African-American students were just over 3% higher than our retention rates for Anglo-American students.

In 2001 the Texas Higher Education Board selected the FYLCP to receive a Texas Higher Education Star Award. Only five programs statewide won Star Awards, and the FYLCP was the only first-year program to do so.

In 1996 A&M-Corpus Christi was selected to participate in the National Learning Communities Dissemination Project. When the project concluded, Jean MacGregor (the Director of the project) assessed the FYLCP as follows:

Texas A&M-Corpus Christi continues to be an important leader in this learning community work . . . . Few schools have exhibited as much commitment to team development and meaningful curricular connections as Texas A&M-Corpus Christi has.

We are proud to point to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and the other campuses in this project as models of practice and expertise, and increasingly, beacons to others in a growing national effort to enhance student learning . . . and deepen our collective understanding of what it means to learn in community. (MacGregor, correspondence)