Summer Orientation Is DONE!

FYE Newsletter

August 3, 2015

Summer Orientation is DONE!

The First Year Seminars, Learning Communities, and Clusters are full!Whee! There were close to 4000 new first years on campus enrolling in classes. And we got 1200 of them to sign up for our program! Great news!

Just FYI, this semester we have:

Standalone First Year Seminars – these are unpaired First Year Seminars.

Learning Communities – paired classes where instructors work together to find common assignments

Learning Clusters – groups of three classes students take together. No requirement or expectation faculty work together. (You can though!)

Fall Convocation: August 27th11am to 3pm, Redwood Room

Hope to see everyone at this year’s FYE Convocation! You can meet your peer mentor, and fill in your course calendar with activities. Are you a new instructor? You won’t want to miss this! Special sessions for new instructors.

One Book: Required for First Year Seminar

Our campus One Book will be “Weedland” ( Yes, it’s mandatory for First Year Seminar. And yes, it’s about the history of marijuana legalization in our state. Cost is about $25 new for students – but the Hornet Bookstore gives a 20% discount! Be sure to pick one up there. Author Peter Hecht will be speaking at our FYE Convocation on August 27!

Look for assignment suggestion soon on the One Book website. One First Year Seminar instructor is planning a ‘book club’ in his class!

First Year Experience Programs workshops at Convocation

For the last hour of Convocation, we will have five workshops for staff and faculty on Thursday, Aug. 27, from 2 to 3 p.m. in the University Union.

“Getting to Know MyeFolio: An Effective Teaching and Learning Tool for Courses, Programs, and Careers” with Dr. Janet Hecsh, College of Education; an interactive session to learn how to integrate MyeFolio into your classroom to help your students throughout their college career; California Suite (third floor).

“What Is ‘Grit’? Why Is Everyone Talking About It? Can It Help Our Students?” with Dr. Su JinJez, Department of Public Policy & Administration; Delta Room (third floor).

“Becoming College Ready: Breaking the Cycle of Remediation” with Ed Mills, vice president for Student Affairs; Forest Suite (second floor).

EOP/SASEEP Team meeting

First Year Seminar New Faculty Orientation

Choose one.

Hornet Hill – A climbing activity at the Well

Attached is information about the Climbing Wall at the Sac State Well. Check out this opportunity for students this semester! Maybe it would work for extra credit in your class?

Constitution Week

Constitution week comes up quick in Fall! Here is the schedule:

Peak adventures: sign up closes first week of September!

Peak Adventures ropes course is back! We did not get as much money this year, but we have a few slots. NO other slots will be made available. What you see here is all we have for the whole year. Use this link to find a spot: Peak Adventures will also be at Convocation to meet with you.

After you sign up, remember:

· Registration will close on September 4th.

· Peak Adventures will email to all professors that sign up with details of where to meet, what to wear and a copy of our waiver (which can be found on our website: Anyone under the age of 17 will need a parent/guardian signature on both pages of our waiver.

Planning your First Year Seminar course?

Be sure to check out our Sac CT First Year Seminar Instructor Sourcepage. If you are not added, just let me know. Lots of info in there! Consider using the articles on this page instead of a text book – it’s an Open Source resource just for First Year Seminar!

ASI Presentations for your class

The Associated Students Incorporate Board would love to come speak with your students about opportunities to get involved on campus. Schedule these student speaker with:

Thomas Lilly|Assistant to the Board Associate

Associated Students Inc. at Sacramento State

6000 J Street Sacramento, CA 95819

p: 916.278.6784 I f: 916.278.2940

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Leadership initiative Overview

You might want to include the LI program in your First Year Seminar class! It’s a great way to get students involved on campus. Here is the info:

The Leadership Initiative is a certificate program designed to develop students’ leadership and professional skills, serve as a foundation for involvement in campus life, and promote retention, academic success, and graduation. The foundation of the LI is based on the Social Change Model of Leadership Development, which encompasses three sets of values individuals build upon to become social change agents —individual values,group values, andsocietal/community values. In conjunction with this model, there are four possible certificates to complete in sequential order: Green, Gold, Hornet Pride, and Leadership Initiative.

Each certificate requires various components to be fulfilled in order to complete that level. Typically, students must attend certificate-designated workshops, attend “Area of Growth” categorized campus events, and complete and submit the respective Certificate Completion Application Form via OrgSync.

LI Certificate-Designated Leadership Workshops

Each certificate workshop focuses on one of the “7 C’s” identified in the Social Change Model of Leadership Development.

Green Certificate:Consciousness of self, Congruence, Commitment

Gold Certificate:Collaboration, Common Purpose, Controversy with Civility

Hornet Pride Certificate:Citizenship, Change (Agent)

Leadership Initiative Certificate:Practicing being a Change Agent

LI “Area of Growth” Categories

The Leadership Initiative utilizes five “Area of Growth” categories based on campus learning goals to identify over 150 events for LI participants can attend each semester. The categories are defined below:

Appreciating Diversity:an event that allows students to learn about people from various cultures, genders, backgrounds and experiences.

Campus Life:an event that contributes to the overall sense of campus engagement and pride.

Professional Development:an event that provides training and education for personal and career development.

Service:an event that provides opportunities to learn about or practice volunteerism, giving of time, talent or treasure to another.

Wellness:an event promoting the state of wellbeing in body, mind and spirit.

Partnership Expectations

SO&L will…

Meet with faculty/instructor to brief program details.

Receive the class roster at the beginning of the semester (and an updated roster, if applicable) to provide you with the most accurate involvement report.

Provide a 30-minute classroom presentation informing students about the LI. To ensure students have ample time and opportunity to complete LI requirements, it is suggested this in-class presentation be scheduled within thefirst three weeksof the semester.

Faculty/Instructor will…

Receive a mid-semester and final student involvement report.

SO&L establishes a deadline for when workshop and event attendance no longer applies towards certificate requirements to receive a certificate in that semester. The deadline for the Fall semester is November 30. The deadline for the Spring semester is April 30.

Be invited to the certificate reception, at the end of each semester, recognizing students who complete a certificate level.

Ways of Incorporating the LI

Many faculty members have incorporated the LI into their curricula in different ways. Here are a few ways faculty have worked in the LI to the Curricula:

Having a class requirement or class event, that could fall under one of the LI “Area of Growth” categories, count toward one of the LI requirements. For example, if you require students to participate in Writing Partners, this could count as Service for the LI.

It is preferred that any class requirement or event held be open to all LI participants.

The event is requested and approved to be added to the LI Calendar at leasttwo weeksprior to the event date using this form:

Allot points within your course based on completion of the LI certificate. For example, points are only given if the certificate was completed by the LI deadline.

Allot points for each workshop/event completed by students.

Resources

Find information about the Leadership Initiative as well as programs SO&L offers at

View workshop and event details on the LI Calendar atlead.orgsync.com/Calendar

First Year Seminar books in Course Reserves

Course reserves notified our office that over 30 copies of the First year Seminar texts (both current and previous versions) were on hold for various instructors on campus.

I now have the copies and will be putting them into our FYE space for students to use.

Writing Partners Wanted:

The Community Engagement Center is looking in increase the number of Writing Partner groups.This project is where college students write letters to local Title I school students. The goal is twofold – exposing kids to college, and turning our First Years into local role models for kids. The programs starts with the letter exchange, then the kids visit campus. When they arrive, they are given gift bags (provided by the CEC), and a campus tour (provided by your students). CEC will be providing ideas for the campus tour, mailing envelopes, and training for this Writing Partner group.

Interested? Just email Dana Kivel, Interim Director of the CEC () or Francine Redada, Administrative Staff of the CEC (). Their goal is to make this experience as easy as possible.Please email them with any interest by July 15, 2015
IRA Grant Funding: Denied
Unfortunately, we were denied funding for the on campus Instructionally Related Activity grant this year. This is the money we usually receive to fund art and cultural events on campus. For example, Dr. Arnaud was using the money to take her class to the Crocker Art Gallery each semester. This will be the first time in several years she can't take them! We continue to look for more funding. Thankfully, we received funding for....

What’s a High Impact Education Practice?

The AAC&U has identified teaching and learning practices that have been test to show benefit for college students from many backgrounds. They increase student retention and student engagement. We do a lot of them! First Year Seminar and Experiences, Learning Communities, Service Learning have all been identified. Last year we added on a new one: Common Intellectual Experiences. Having the One Book in our course allows the first year students to connect with students on campus through critical thinking, and participation in campus activities. Learn more at

First Year Experience for fall 2015

Orientation is going great! Students are so excited for our courses, First Year Seminars:

• Standalone First Year Seminars for athletes & residence hall students
• Learning Communities of two courses for specific majors, and undeclared students
• Learning Clusters of three courses for undeclared students

There are a total of 51 First Year Seminars for our students this semester! That means 51 peer mentors! Fortunately, we have The FYE Space in the library for our students to meet peer mentors, study, and attend workshops.

How to improve the student college experience

Gallup surveyed 30,000 college students and found the ‘big six’ to make the college experience more valuable. Here they are:

• a professor who made them excited about learning
• professors who cared about them as a person
• a mentor who encouraged them to pursue their goals and dreams
• worked on a long-term project
• had a job or internship where they applied what they were learning
• were extremely involved in extra-curricular activities

Our faculty and peer mentors can help students meet all of these during their first semester! Most semesters we meet the first three quickly, thanks to all of you!

Read the article here:

The Student Tech Center: eFolio’s and more!

The Student Tech Center is ready and able to assist students with the myEfolio product. We have amassed significant knowledge this academic year and have adequate resources to assist students.

On another topic, the Student Tech Center does collaborate with faculty to teach and support the use of technology in classes. If there are any FYE faculty who want to use a technology in their class, we can teach that to the students. For example, if a poster is assigned, we can teach poster design; if a presentation is required, we can teach PowerPoint Best Practices; or if a paper is required, we can teach how to automate different styles in Word. We believe faculty should be able to add a technology component to their assignments and not have to worry about learning, teaching, or supporting it to their students. That's what we do in the Student Tech Center.

In addition to collaborating directly with faculty, we would like FYE faculty to know about our quick workshops. A class come to us or we can go to a class and teach our "Tech Services Overview for Students." The workshops explains to students all the technology services available to them, including the My Sac State portal, computer labs, printing, SacCT, the Service Desk, information security and more. The presentation is about 20 minutes, depending on the number of questions we are asked. When a faculty member brings the class to us, we include a tour of the AIRC building and all the facilities and programs available to students.

Finally, we do teach an "Overview of SacCT" workshop. If any FYE faculty plan to use SacCT, this useful workshop comes in handy. In the past, we have customized the workshop to include tools not used often, like the Wiki.

Contact information is below. You can also contact CorrinMattos at 8-2261 or send her an email .