The Freshman Success Seminar (FSS) is a required class for all incoming freshman. There is currently a debate over the number of weeks the class should meet, as well as how beneficial the class is to the students overall.
Most of these freshman success classes meet for 15 hours over an eight week period. According to Dr. Ricky Dobbs, associate professor of history and assistant dean of the college of arts and sciences, the purpose of condensing so many hours into such a short period of time (the first half of their first semester) is be more beneficial to the students when mid-terms rolled around.
“Dr. Hendrix [vice president for academic affairs] asked me to put together a committee that will look at FSS as we’re doing it now. That committee will review the whole thing; how affective we are, what we could do better, etc.” Dobbs said.
Dr. Dobbs asked the committee members to reconsider the options, “eight weeks v. 15 weeks.”
The number of hours doesn’t change either way; it is still 15 face-to-face hours. The only thing that changes is the how long the course will last; instead of meeting twice a week for eight weeks, the class would meet once a week for 15.
“It is important to know that nothing has been decided or changed, yet. What has been talked about is whether or not this eight week thing has worked.” Dobbs said.
Dr. Dobbs isn’t sure of his position on the subject, because the people who support the eight week program have legitimate reasons to do so, but there is one major issue to go along with that: “What happens the other seven weeks of the semester? After these students have their first round of tests, how good of a job are we, the instructors, doing of paying attention to these students growth, both academically and personally? Do we have FSS teachers out there that are doing their eight weeks and then cutting the students loose the last seven?” Dobbs said.
“Whether it is eight weeks or 15 weeks, I don’t have an opinion, but what we’ve done is created a committee to review the whole course, and look at everything from how long the class is to how well students are learning this stuff to how the faculty members are acting on it. These are just a few of the questions that have been asked to be looked at.” Dobbs said.
This committee will begin meeting on Thursday, Nov. 13, and will continue to do so off and on until the beginning of February.
There is one thing that has been decided on, ideally, for the next fall semester, and “it’s that we’ll have a committee that will chose a book, some sort of notable book out there on the Best Seller list, that all entering students will read together at the same time. We’ll try to get the author on campus, and we’ll have discussion sessions. We also want to involve the community by having some of the people of Commerce read the same book as sort of a means of entertainment.” Dobbs said.
“For a long time, the tendency was to say that freshman success was all about retaining students, and giving them the skills that they needed that they didn’t get out of high school. The thing is though that students don’t want to be told over and over again what to do. There are faculty members out there that are trying to advocate a way to make the class more exciting and challenging academically for the students to get them ready for college.” Dobbs said.
No matter what is decided amongst the committee members, the freshman success class will only count for one credit hour.