First Year Experience at the University of Minnesota, Morris

Good morning. I have very strong feelings about how you lead your life. You always look ahead, you never look back.
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With best wishes :-D, Vi.

Hi everyone. Think of yourself as an incandescent power, illuminated and perhaps forever talked to by God and his messengers.
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With best wishes 8), Rihana.

Great comments so far--sorry I'm coming on late! I really agree with Sarah here--as a Gustavus graduate, I have always been (and probably always will be!) a GUSTIE. I know it. My friends and family know it. It's really who I am. Since I started here, I've been trying to help create that same feeling about UMM because being a Gustie is more than just being a music major or MCSA representative. Everyone is a Gustie--and that's our own sub-culture to the world at large. I'm the nerd that writes all of the Admissions e-mails that get sent out to prospective students and I'm constantly telling them how great their life would be as a Cougar--I just wish it would catch on more and be seen as MORE than just an athletic mascot. UMMers (again--I agree with Sarah--yuck!) need that group identity!

From the counseling perspective, let me offer up for consideration the sub-group of students [trying to cope] with chronic mental illnesses. At any given time, roughly a quarter to a third of our students have mood and/or anxiety disorders. Others have ADHD, bi-polar, and a variety of diagnosable personality disorders.

I have seen an increase over the past 8 years in students I treat for social phobias. Many of these students fear group projects, talking in class, and, if they miss a class or two, returning to class because of a fear that the professor will think less of them, even if the reason for the absence is legitimate, rather than talking directly with the faculty member about their situation.

Due to confidentiality (and students' own stigma), faculty and staff won't know which of their students belong to this sub-group. But I think it's important to keep these students in mind as we have this discussions.

Most complaints that I hear about FYS come from students centering around the perception that the required FYS either is not the one the one they wanted or is seen as waste of time because it is only two credits and does not fit into their major. I see first year students as a defined group in need of academic and social guidance. Of these it is the latter that may need more emphasis in FYS. Perhaps this could be somehow melded with academic content that rises a bit more formally from the disciplines.

I agree that sub-divisions exist and are important. At the same time, we need to work to help students connect across sub-divisions and see new possibilities. While the major is a natural area, we should not elevate it in the first year since so many students will for a variety of reasons, most of them good, change majors by the end of the first year. Major communities emerge naturally and most healthfully in the junior and senior years.

To me - and maybe this is a music-specific phenomenon - students group and bond within their major(s). And right there is where I could envision a better use of First Year Seminars:


If FYS could be specific to certain majors and taught by faculty members of those majors, these courses could become much more applicable to students. I realize that it is great to have freedom of choice, but at the same time I have heard multiple complaints from students about the fact that their FYS did not relate to what they are aiming to accomplish at UMM - and thus, they experienced them as a "waste of time".

In terms of cohesion, what really bugs me about campus is our (lack of) common spaces. We (I'm talking about fac/staff/students) are always running off to a particular activity, then going home. There are few if any spaces on campus that allow us to come together and just hang out and chat. TMC is now too austere and brightly lit to give one a feeling of real (communicative) intimacy. I want a big game room (pool, table-hockey, a whole wall of board gamnes, clustered, comfy seating, a coffee bar and snacks) or someplace central where all students can just sort of be, instead of always multi-tasking, scurrying from one thing to the next. While we're at it: how about a Faculty Commons? I only see my colleagues in Committees or a Campus Assembly. We need a place to chill out, too.

A difficult question...

I think minorities are an obvious group, though I don't know if their attrition rate after the first year is any higher than non-minorities.

I agree with Sarah's point about lacking that sense of being an Ole or a Cobber.

I would guess that mostly comes from tradition and having parents and other authority figures who attended those schools. So being so young, relatively,
it's hard to foster this idea about being "a Cougar"--though I wish it were so.

I think that dynamic feeds itself very well. Look at Notre Dame or Dartmouth or any other school where the students are fanatic about being just that.

Still I don't know how you start the traditions that these other schools have. They might just have to evolve. The Gay-Indy tug of war is one; the drag show; CNIA Pow Wow. What else?

One challenge that I think we face at UMM is trying to create a rallying identity for UMM students. Other schools' students readily identify as Cobbers, Oles, Macs, etc. Do our students identify as Cougars? As UMMers (yuk)?

Despite the wide range of diversity in our students, I think our goal is to have our students identify with UMM and feel that they are part of this place. What is the core of that unifying force?

A Chronicale of Higher Ed article said that student ID themselves by activities their freshman year-- sports, music, theater, saddle, club, dance. From my observations, I agree with that.
In sophomore year they seem to identify more as a bio or chem or English major than they do as a dancer or a football player or whatever.

I believe minorities are an important group to give additional guidance/assistance to in order to keep them here.

Sub-population Nerds. I have a thousand ideas for freshmen seminar courses. None of which really fit under the diversity umbrella. I think that this is particularly limiting to subjects relating to science.

I remember certain people being involved in sports, others being notorious party kids, hard-core studiers, the super involved with student groups, church groups, some shut-ins and floor regulars. There are obviously others, too.