Academic First Year Experiences

Teaching CSUN's Freshmen: What's New, What's Ongoing

(Note: documents on this page can be viewed online using free Adobe Acrobat Reader software.)

The Future of the CSU: The Collective Bargaining Agreement

While it's impossible to know what the future will hold, faculty might want to take a look at the Collective Bargaining Agreement, which governs some parts of our shared future. Article 38 (as you will see) covers layoff.

The Soloist by Steve Lopez will be the 2009-2010 Freshman Common Reading at CSUN. Save the date for his campus visit as our Convocation speaker!

The Soloist by Steve Lopez will be the 2009-2010 Freshman Common Reading at CSUN. Save the date of Thursday, September 3, 2009, when Lopez will be the keynote speaker at Freshman Convocation (6:00 p.m. on the Oviatt Library Lawn). He will also be talking more informally with faculty and staff that afternoon from 4-5 p.m. in the Oviatt Library Presentation Room.

The Soloist is a wonderful book, but we'll need a new title for the following year. Now is the time to nominate a book you love for CSUN's 2010-2011 Freshman Common Reading.

Fall 2009 First-Time Freshman Registration (6/2/09)

Current data on first-time freshman registration at CSUN is available online at the Institutional Research website. As of 6/1/09, CSUN had registered 1510 brand-new freshmen.

New Student Resource: "Roadmaps to Graduation" (3/4/09)

News from Cynthia Rawitch, AVP of Undergraduate Studies: "Thanks to the collaboration between Admissions & Records and the academic departments over the last several months, we have current, attractive and easy-to-understand 4-year and transfer plans for all CSUN undergraduate departments and programs, including those with multiple options and concentrations."

Whatever Happened to Online Instruction?

For those of you who wonder, the work of Online Instruction has been transferred to Academic Technology. In their own words: "The Academic Technology department brings together the Office of Online Instruction, the Accessible Technology Initiative coordination, Media Services, and Classroom Technology. Our purpose is to provide a wide range of applications and services to support the teaching and learning mission in the classroom and online." Academic Technology will be guiding the campus towards choosing a successor to WebCT, our campus learning management system. See http://www.csun.edu/at/support/index.html for room locations and additional information about Academic Technology.

Wordle? Wordle? What's Wordle, Anyway?

Wordle is a web-based Java program that lets a user create a word cloud. Here's a wordle for this website: For word-lovers, this software application offers a bit of intellectual fun; but it's also useful for teaching and learning, because it generates a hierarchical view of any set of text you choose to paste into the word box. The image displayed here for Academic First Year Experiences is clickable in case you want to see the word cloud in greater detail. One immediate pedagogical use for Wordle might be as a gateway into the analysis of a poem. There are undoubtedly other possibilities. Here's the Wordle home page. Create your own wordle; have fun; tell me what you come up with. And if my clickable Wordle image doesn't work (if it doesn't open as a larger image in a new window), you may want to review Wordle's FAQ entry about "Troubleshooting" when viewing Wordles.

New Faculty-to-Faculty Technology Series: Teaching & Learning Bytes

With technical support from Academic Technology, Sandra Chong (Elementary Education) has put together a new series of one-hour programs showcasing and explaining how CSUN faculty are using technology for teaching and learning. The events in the "Teaching & Learning Bytes" series will take place from 12-1 p.m. on most Mondays beginning February 2 in OV 30--or you can attend virtually via Elluminate. For details, see http://www.csun.edu/at/teachingwithtechnology/events.html or review the series poster (.pdf file*).

*This .pdf document can be viewed online using free Adobe Acrobat Reader software.

It's 2009! So Here's a Fabulous Website for All of Us Who Care about Teaching....

This fabulous website originally posted by the Faculty Development folks at Honolulu Community College offers a comprehensive list of Teaching Tips beautifully grouped in usable categories (like Core Abilities, Critical Thinking, The First Day, and How People Learn). A classic! (That is: clearly old but really good.) URL: http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/teachtip.htm

"Why Students Lose Confidence": Posting from Tomorrow's Professor

This very brief article (as Tomorrow's Professor explains) "is a report on a study that looks at reasons why many freshman engineering students switch majors or drop out of college entirely. It has implications for many other disciplines as well. The article is by Mica A. Hutchison-Green." Tomorrow's Professor is a mailing list that offers "Desk-Top Faculty Development, One Hundred Times A Year." It is sponsored by the Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning.

The Freshman Celebration: Scholarly and Creative Works by CSUN Freshmen

Four hundred students, assorted faculty, and distinguished guests celebrated freshman scholarship and creativity on Nov. 19 at the Freshman Celebration in the USU Grand Salon. Exhibits included photos, essays, posters, albums, a chain link fence art wall, videos, PowerPoints, a collection of masks, and an honest-to-goodness installation. (More information and additional photos...)

Ask Matty: New Web Resource for Students

Ask Matty is a new resource dedicated to answering your questions about Cal State Northridge. Ever had a question about CSUN that you couldn't easily find an answer to? By simply typing your question into the search box and clicking submit, Matty will find an answer instantly! Give it a try; works for faculty, too: Ask Matty

Food for Thought from Joe Cuseo: Successful Retention and Successful Education

"I see a striking synergy between the research findings on organizational behavior and the principles posited by [ . . .] psychosocial theories of student retention: active involvement, social integration, and personal validation. Namely, the organizational behaviors that promote retention seem to be those that also: (a) promote students’ active involvement in the college experience (e.g., student input and participation in the organization’s decision-making processes), (b) facilitate students’ social integration into the college community (e.g., integration of students with faculty, staff, and administrators on college committees), and (c) increase college students’ feelings of personal significance (e.g., validating students by representing them formally in the college’s organizational structure).

"Further synergy is supplied by the fact these three retention-promoting principles are also essential elements of effective learning (academic achievement)—-i.e., learning is enhanced when students are actively engaged in the learning process (McKeachie et al., 1986), when they interact with others to 'socially construct' knowledge (Bruffee, 1993), and when they find personal significance (meaning) in what they are learning (Weinstein & Meyer, 1991). Thus, institutional interventions designed to promote student retention may be expected to simultaneously promote student learning. This supports the common contention among retention scholars that, 'successful retention is nothing more than successful education'” [emphasis added].

Cuseo, Joe. "Student Retention: Organizational Factors." Attachment to Online Post, First Year Experience Listserv. 9 Sept. 2008. http://www.sc.edu/fye/listservs/index.html