Fiorello H. LaGuardia Community College, located in Western Queens, New York, was established as a branch of the City University of New York (CUNY) to provide access to higher education for the city's historically under-served populations. As an “open admissions” public institution, the College serves more than 11,000 matriculated students working towards associate degrees and certificates in the arts, sciences, and technical professions. The College’s students are richly diverse, yet some typical characteristics include low-income (85% of the student body) and academic underpreparedness (92% need at least one developmental skills course). Approximately 70% of the College’s students were born outside of the U.S. and nearly half of the entering class of 2000 that was non-U.S. born had immigrated within the past five years. Students commute to LaGuardia from across the New York City metropolitan area; there are no residential facilities at the College.

In response to these characteristics of our student population, all of the College’s first year programs thus concentrate on two major goals: a) fostering academic success among developmental and ESL students, and b) creating a sense of community and connectedness to the College among a highly diverse group of commuting students.

Description of First Year Programs

Learning Communities. LaGuardia’s initial efforts at developing first year programs were in the area of learning communities for freshman; indeed, the College has a long history and national reputation in this field. Over the last few years, the College has made substantial increases in the number of learning communities available to students, in particular for those students needing developmental work. These learning communities typically link developmental courses with credit-bearing courses in the disciplines; for example, approximately fifty percent of ESL courses are now offered in this mode (34% of the incoming students are placed in ESL). The “New Student House” model serves students with who need skills work in more than one area by linking two developmental courses with a discipline-area course. Last year, in an effort to expand the number of learning communities available to the incoming class even further, the College instituted a new model, Freshman Interest Groups (FIGs), with 10-12 sections offered per semester.

New Student Seminar. The College requires new students to take a freshman orientation course, the New Student Seminar, designed to provide students with the knowledge and skills they need to be successful in college. Approximately 40 sections of this course are being offered this semester. New Student Seminar is also incorporated in to freshman learning communities, including New Student House and the new FIGs.

Quick Start and other Intensives. The College offers an array of “pre-freshman” intensive courses in its Quick Start summer program designed to accelerate students through the basic skills course sequences. These skills courses include a “Strategies for Success” counseling component as well; approximately 400 incoming students participate each summer. Other skills intensives include “Second Chance,” a one-week course for students who “nearly pass” a basic skills course, designed to assist them in passing without having to retake the course for an entire semester.

Opening Sessions for New Students. Best practices in successful first-year experience programs include the creation of common, shared experiences, particularly intellectual experiences, that set an academic tone and expectations for students, as well as create a greater sense of community and connectedness to the institution, which is of particular importance for a commuter college. Last year the College instituted an “Opening Sessions” day for incoming students, with a plenary session and concurrent workshops/presentations led by LaGuardia faculty and students on topics such as leadership, women’s issues, communication, student clubs, student success stories, community activism, and diversity.

Common Reading. Another new effort this past year to create a shared intellectual experience for first-year students was the establishment of a freshman theme (“Personal Narrative and Memoir”) and common reading (“Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First Hundred Years”). Faculty-led discussions of the text were built into Opening Sessions for new students. Faculty developed a website for both student and faculty use with lesson plans and background materials for the text.

Mentoring. This past year the College instituted a program to create a cadre of mentors for first-year students consisting of advanced students, faculty/staff, and alumni. Mentors are asked to assist students in finding their way through the system and are trained on how to connect students with support services on campus.

Technology. First-year programs are now being enhanced through the use of educational technology. The College is instituting electronic portfolios for all students; the portfolio is being introduced in FIGs and other freshman learning communities. In addition, a program in “online tutoring” for first-year students is being piloted this semester.

Evidence of Effectiveness

One measure of the impact of the College’s first year initiatives is the first-year retention rate. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, first-year persistence at public two-year colleges averages 65% (NCES Report No. 1999087). One-year persistence rates at LaGuardia are substantially higher than the national average: over the past five years, first-year persistence has averaged 65%.

Repeated assessments of learning communities reveal that this approach has been of great benefit in improving the learning outcomes of first-year students. Of the 37 courses in Fall 1998 that included at least one section also taught in a learning community, 25 of those sections (68%) had higher pass rates than the pass rates for the other sections of that course. In Spring, 1999, of 35 courses offered with at least one section taught as part of a learning community, 25 (or 71%) had pass rates higher than the pass rate for the other sections of that course. “Quick Start” intensives are highly successful at accelerating students through developmental courses, with pass rates averaging 70% last summer. “Second Chance” intensives typically have a pass rate of 90%. The College’s new initiatives (Opening Sessions for New Students, Common Reading, and Mentoring) have not yet been in place long enough to undergo a full outcomes assessment, particularly in regard to long-term effect on retention. Preliminary assessments, however, have indicated a favorable response to these projects. The level of participation has been extremely high; for example, almost 600 students participated in last fall’s Opening Sessions for New Students, with 84% rating the day’s activities as very good to excellent; over 30 faculty members volunteered to lead discussion sessions on the common reading at that same event. In the first semester of mentoring, over 130 faculty and staff volunteered to be mentors and over 250 new students requested a mentor.

The College has demonstrated consistent institutional support for first-year initiatives. The First-Year Experience Committee is chaired by the Vice President for Enrollment Management & Student Development and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and with faculty and staff membership from both divisions, is a model for cross-divisional collaboration. The College also has a long-established Office of Academic Collaborative Programs & Services, with two professional full-time staff members to support first-year programs.