First Year Experience Event

The new General Education Program (GenEd) seeks to engage students with best practices. Starting in Fall 2018 the First Year Experience (FYE) courses can be taught as single, or paired courses, with an emphasis on Fall quarter for early student introductions to the university community.

Please join the innovative FYE Faculty community sometime between 12:00 to 3:00 on Monday, December 4^th at Faculty Commons to discuss ideas about FYE courses. We will also have FYE approval forms available and would be happy to help you (form attached) complete a proposal:

If you can’t make it to any of these, please feel free to call (509.359.7026) or E-mail (cpritchard@ewu.edu) Chad to set up a chat.

What is a First Year Experience (FYE)?

1. FYE courses are 5-credit, thematically-focused courses designed to both introduce content and to provide in-coming first year students with the skills they will need to successfully complete their college education at EWU. FYE courses can be taught as a single course, or a paired sequence that addresses the course theme from multiple disciplinary perspectives
2. FYE Faculty & CAAR advisors will introduce students to EWU success skills.  A new delivery approach for these skills will be piloted in Fall 2018 and will include working with a CAAR advisor to develop weekly lab activities during normal class focusing on skills that help students succeed at EWU. CAAR has already developed SLO’s for EWU Student Success Skills and are tasked with assessment of these skills.  Working together we can streamline the first year for students while allowing FYE faculty more time for emphasis on course content and co-teaching success skills will provide a more consistent introduction for students.
3. All FYE courses will be centered around 3 of the 5 GenEd Learning Outcomes.  Specifically, each FYE course will address two of the following three outcomes:  Creative Thinking, Inquiry and Analysis, or Information Literacy.  It will also address one of the two following outcomes: Writing and Communication or Quantitative Literacy.  Introducing the GenEd Learning Outcomes at the freshman-level provides students a common thread to keep their GenEd Education courses cohesive and facilitates assessment of the overall GenEd program.
4. FYE courses will be limited to 25 students to help students interact with each other and faculty, while promoting a successful start to EWU.
5. Up to two FYE’s can fulfill an equivalent GenEd course requirement in the applicable breadth-area (Humanities, Social Sciences, or Natural Sciences).

Thank You Very Much,

Chad Pritchard, PhD, LG
General Education Program Director
Associate Professor, Department of Geology
Eastern Washington University
Cheney, Washington 99004-2439
cpritchard@ewu.edu