VCU news

By Tom Gresham

When Seth Sykes advises VCU students, he often recommends programs and services available at the university to help the students with their academic goals. In previous years, Sykes would have to pass along a phone number or building name to a student and hope he or she followed through. Now, however, Sykes, director of academic advising, can just escort the student down the hall and open the door to the appropriate office.

“That’s a big change here,” Sykes said.

This month, VCU launched the University College in time to welcome new students to campus. The University College provides a single home for interrelated programs and services available to undergraduate students. The integration of these programs into a centralized location at renovated Hibbs Hall will provide students with a highly comprehensive collection of solutions to a broad range of questions.

VCU officials believe University College will enhance the first-year experience for students, giving them more and better access to services that can improve their college experience. Programs such as academic advising, the Campus Learning Center, the Writing Center, the VCU Compact, testing services and STAR, the incoming students’ introduction to VCU, are each housed in University College.

The focus of University College is to help students manage the transition to college during their first year, when they are most likely to be uncertain in their new environs. Gathering the types of programs typically beneficial to new students into one location will encourage students to take advantage of the aid available to them, making the services almost too convenient to pass up.

“The more these things are coordinated the more we feel like the students will know where to go and the more they will feel comfortable using what’s available to them,” said Jon Steingass, dean of University College. “That’s really going to help their experience. We believe that (University College) is going to give more students a chance to be successful and to persist through their sophomore year.”

Patty Strong, director of the Writing Center, said her program’s new “terrific space,” a window-lined office located in the Hibbs rotunda area, should help it attract more students, as will more computer monitors, a larger staff and collaborations with academic advising and the Campus Learning Center, which offers an array of academic support services.

Strong said too many students assume the Writing Center is designed only for English classes, particularly since the program previously resided in the English department. The move to University College should correct that misperception.

“Just in terms of how visible we are now, it really changes things for us,” Strong said. “We’re going to be able to reach a broader swath of the VCU population by virtue of being in a much more accessible and attractive place.”

An expanded academic advising program will be central to University College’s mission. All incoming students will be assigned to an academic adviser based in the University College offices. Students and advisers will meet for the first time sometime in the opening month of school, giving students an early introduction to the advising system and to the services at University College. Students will meet with their advisers a minimum of two times each semester.

Advisers will help students understand procedures and requirements at VCU, address any academic struggles and develop strategies for pursuing a student’s specific educational and career goals. The objective is to enable students to cut a path at VCU that is their own.

“The advising program should make each student’s academic experience unique,” Steingass said. “It will allow students to pursue an experience that closely follows their interests and their objectives here.”

Sykes said centralizing the advising system for new students, as well as undeclared students and “pre-” students, will ensure that each student receives a similar advising experience. In addition to being increasingly available to students, advisers will more closely monitor their progress. Resident advisers and faculty members will alert academic advisers to students showing warning signs of classroom struggle or apathy, so that advisers can intervene and help students right themselves.

Steingass said University College officials hope to make students feel engaged with VCU immediately, even before they move into their dorm rooms. Incoming students attend STAR (Students, Transitions, Advising, Registration) in the summer before classes to learn about college life, they warm to campus and meet their peers during Welcome Week’s feast of activities and they build an academic foundation during their first year with UNIV 101, an Introduction to VCU course, and the VCU Compact, a yearlong, two-course sequence designed to provide each student with a base of knowledge for lifelong learning.

As part of the University College’s birth, VCU also developed a summer reading program. First-year students were expected to participate in the program, which aims to introduce incoming students to the academic and intellectual culture of VCU through a common reading experience. After reading the selected book during the summer, students participated in small discussion sessions about the book during their first week on campus. Faculty, staff and students at VCU led the various sessions.

The program’s first selection, “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything,” by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, proved to be a hit with students, according to Daphne Rankin, interim director of student engagement at VCU. Rankin said discussion groups attracted larger-than-expected turnouts and feedback from students indicated that the book served as a fitting introduction to college life, inspiring energetic debate with their new peers and a willingness to look at everything a bit differently. Rankin said one student even told her that students had been debating “Freakonomics” via the popular Facebook Web site over the summer.

“The interest has been overwhelming,” Rankin said. “It’s clear that the students really have been discussing this book. It’s been a great new program for the school.”

Another brand-new program to develop out of the University College is a residential villages initiative, which allows freshmen students to choose to live in a section of a dorm with other students with similar academic interests.

Steingass said the University College offers a fertile field for creative approaches to supporting VCU’s newest students.

“There are going to be a lot of exciting opportunities to come out of (the University College),” Steingass said. “It’s kind of a grand experiment, but we are hopeful that this is going to have some significant implications for students and their success here.”

For more information, visit the University College web site at http://www.vcu.edu/uc/.