The sophomore year represents a critical transition for students. As institutions shift their attention from these students to the incoming class, sophomores can feel unsupported as they face increased academic challenges and explore major and career options. Sophomore dropout and disengagement has led administrators, faculty, and researchers to increase their attention to these students’ unique needs.

The 2019 National Survey of Sophomore-Year Initiatives sought to explore institutional responses to and support for sophomore students. This new report reviews these findings, including institutional practices related to academic advising for sophomores. Additionally, the report offers implications for research and practice by highlighting the ways in which institutional efforts and initiatives can be better designed for responsiveness based on differences in campus context, student backgrounds, and student needs.

Traditionally, institutional supports for college student success have been concentrated in the first and senior years, though attention to the sophomore year has increased over the last two decades. Paying attention to the second college year is vitally important, as some evidence suggests students are more likely to leave their institution during this time than they are in the first year. The case studies of sophomore initiatives featured in this volume describe programs that build on institutional objectives for the first college year and prepare students for the transition to the major and, ultimately, graduation. Rich program descriptions and discussions of assessment provide practitioners focused on designing a cohesive undergraduate experience excellent models to guide their work.

The National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition has been studying the structure and administration of high-impact practices in the first college year for nearly three decades. 

This package offers the most comprehensive landscape study of these initiatives to date, drawing on analysis of the 2017 National Survey of the First-Year Experience. The survey includes sections on overall institutional attention to the first year, as well as common first-year programs including first-year seminars, academic advising, orientation, common-reading initiatives, early-alert programs, learning communities, and residential programs.

The package includes:

2017 National Survey on the First-Year Experience: Creating and Coordinating Structures to Support Student Success, a paperback report of the major findings of the survey with analysis of specific first-year initiatives written by scholars and practitioners in the field.

Response Frequencies from the 2017 National Survey on the First-Year Experience, an eBook which contains comprehensive data tables including responses to all survey items disaggregated by institutional type, control, and first-year cohort size.

Buy separately or as a package with the eBook Response Frequencies from the 2017 National Survey on the First-Year Experience.

The first-year seminar continues to be a common structure for supporting student success in higher education, yet it represents only one of many first-year programs.

With this in mind, the 2017 National Survey on The First-Year Experience marks a change from previous surveys administered by The National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition by exploring a broad range of initiatives designed to support success in the first college year.

Recognizing that individual first-year programs are connected to extensive bodies of literature and practice, authors representing diverse professional networks focused on college student success contribute their voices to the analyses and presentation of results. The report includes an overview of institutional attention to the first year and the prevalence of and connections between first-year programs, a review of the results relating to selected first-year programs, and implications for practice and future research.

The 2017 National Survey on the First-Year Experience was designed to explore the structure and administration of a broad range of initiatives designed to support success in the first college year. Specific sections of the survey examine overall institutional attention to the first year, as well as common first-year programs including first-year seminars, academic advising, orientation, common-reading initiatives, early-alert programs, learning communities, and residential programs.

Response Frequencies from the 2017 National Survey on The First-Year Experience is a fixed-layout eBook which contains comprehensive data tables including responses to all survey items disaggregated by institutional type, control, and first-year cohort size.

Buy the eBook separately or as a package with the print version of the Research Report on College Transitions No. 9, 2017 National Survey on the First-Year Experience: Creating and Coordinating Structures to Support Student Success.

Senior capstone experiences, one of a number of high-impact educational practices promoted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, provide students with an opportunity to integrate and apply what they have learned throughout their undergraduate years. Participating in capstone experiences have been linked to engagement in deep learning and gains in personal and social development, practical competence, and general education. The 2016 National Survey of Senior Capstone Experiences is an institution-level study designed to gather a national profile of campus efforts to promote student success in the senior year. This research report presents findings related to institutional priorities for the senior year, the types of capstone experiences offered, and the organization and administration of select capstone experiences.

First-year seminars have been widely hailed as a high-impact educational practice, leading to improved academic performance, increased retention, and achievement of critical 21st Century learning outcomes. While the first-year seminar tends to be narrowly defined in the literature, national explorations of course structure and administration underscore the diversity of these curricular initiatives across and within individual campuses. What then are the common denominators among these highly variable courses that contribute to their educational effectiveness?

This collection of case studies--representing a wide variety of institutional and seminar types--addresses this question. Using Kuh and O’Donnell’s eight conditions of effective educational initiatives as a framework, authors describe the structure, pedagogy, and assessment strategies that lead to high-quality seminars. Introductory and concluding essays examine the structural conditions that are likely to support educational effectiveness in the seminar and describe the most commonly reported conditions across all cases. What Makes the First-Year Seminar High Impact? offers abundant models for ensuring the delivery of a high-quality educational experience to entering students.

Less is known about the second college year compared to other transition points, and fewer high-impact initiatives and curricular programs tend to be offered to sophomores. To increase our knowledge of this important, but sometimes neglected, year on the collegiate journey, The National Survey of Sophomore-Year Initiatives and the Sophomore Experiences Survey was undertaken. Researchers explored sophomore student characteristics, institutional efforts to support sophomores, and student perceptions of their learning and development. Divided into three sections, the report offers an overview of each survey instrument and an integrated discussion of findings and their implications for practice and ongoing research. The research report provides useful tools for institutions looking for benchmarks to create new sophomore-year programs or restructure existing initiatives.

For a quarter century, the National Resource Center has been examining the prevalence, structure, and administration of first-year seminars on American college campuses. The 2012-2013 administration of the National Survey of First-Year Seminars was expanded to explore the connection between the seminar and other high-impact practices in the first college year, including learning communities, service-learning, common reading programs, undergraduate research, and writing instruction. Findings are disaggregated by institutional characteristics and seminar type so that readers may easily identify the course features with the greatest relevance for their own context.