•  
  •  
 

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

relationship mapping, theme based communities, freshman academy

College

David O. McKay School of Education

Department

Teacher Education

Abstract

In an effort to help incoming freshman make a successful transition to university life, BYU created Freshman Academy. Freshman Academy is a one semester program in which students register for an envelope of core classes. The same group of students attends all of the classes within the envelope. These groups of students are called learning communities. For each learning community, Freshman Academy provides a peer mentor that works with the students. A peer mentor is an upper classman that has shown academic success, has taken many of the classes that are in the community, and is familiar with campus resources. Peer mentors act as a guide and a friend. Freshman Academy hopes that students participating in the program will make many beneficial connections with each other and faculty members as well as with campus resources. Strong social support by peers and faculty at the university significantly influence a student’s adjustment to college. Students who have strong support from faculty and other students have lower dropout rates and better GPA’s (Martin Jr et al., 1999). One study found that having good connections to other first year students provided both social and academic support (Yazedjian et al., 2007). These relationships among students also lead to a strong sense of attachment to the institution (Yazedjian et al., 2007).

Download

Share

COinS