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Academic First Year Experiences

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Reflections on the Teaching of Freshmen with Dr. James E. Sefton (Archived Event)

Mountain climber clings precariously to a  cliff

Workshop time and place:

Workshop description:

Join Dr. James E. Sefton (Professor of History at CSUN since 1965) for a discussion of his very brief but trenchant essay, “Reflections on the Teaching of Freshmen," which might well be subtitled (though it is not), "The Trouble with Seamless Transitions."

Resources

Read Dr. Sefton's three-page essay "Reflections on the Teaching of Freshmen" (.pdf)

For further reading on the "labyrinth of mysteries" surrounding the case of one Fall 2008 freshman in particular: James E. Sefton, "This Just In: The Mystery of Student No. 32,355" (.pdf)

And in addition, Jim suggests this episode of Sixty Minutes (Nov. 2007, updated May 2008), "The 'Millennials' Are Coming: Morley Safer on the New Generation of American Workers".

Alos from Jim, here are two links for the "Report of the Committee on Grade Inflation, Spring 2006," which Jim suggests is "highly relevant to the issues surrounding the teaching of Freshmen":

  1. http://www.csun.edu/coc/report06/gradinfl.pdf
  2. http://www.csun.edu/councilofchairs/report06data.html

As Jim explains, "The reason for two URLs is that the report was posted in two parts. The first is the nine-page text, and the second is the supporting data by colleges and departments."

Last but not least: Michael Neubauer (director of Developmental Math until summer 2009) offers this data on the 2007-2008 Developmental Math passage rates: Michael-Neubauer-Dev-Math-Pass-Rates.pdf