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This article describes the effect of participation in experiential activities in a first-year seminar on students’ perceptions of self-esteem and academic performance in their first semester at Kennesaw State University. Findings suggest that student participants had greater levels of self-esteem and achieved higher grade point averages than their peers who were in first-year seminars that were not experientially oriented. The article concludes with strategies for instructors to use to purposefully incorporate experiential learning into a first-year seminar.

McGill's Macdonald Campus FRACTAL program is a relatively new initiative that provides freshman (U0) students with the structure and academic skills necessary for a smooth transition into all aspects of university life. Central to this initiative are three leading factors: (a) the program director and the academic advisor are also professors for the majority of the freshman courses, (b) the freshman seminar course combines academic advising with study and life skills coaching, (c) an exhibition-style Majors' Fair at the end of freshman year displays the available programs of study. This integrated approach of teaching and (intrusive) advising, the use of STEM research-based best-practices, along with the latest teaching technology in the classroom, has drastically reduced the number of students on academic probation, while also increasing retention.

The purpose of this multi-campus study was to determine how participating in a first-year seminar impacts students during the first semester of college. In the years since the first credit-bearing first-year seminar was offered at Reed College in 1911 (Gordon & Grites, 1984), many campuses have created seminars that address a variety of subject matter and meet the needs of an institution and its students. The customized nature of contemporary seminars has caused much of the course assessment and research to focus on measuring the impact of these institution-specific courses on retention (Porter & Swing, 2006). Qualitative methods were used in this study to identify additional ways first-year seminar participation influences the early college experience of students enrolled in the course. The study found that participating in a first-year seminar contributed to students' feelings of confidence in academic skills and abilities, as well as the connections they developed with their peers and seminar instructor. Several aspects of the first-year seminars in this study, including the content and ways in which the course was taught, were found to contribute to the perceptions of the participants.

Traditional new student orientation programming is focused on the duality of academic preparation and social integration. For graduate students, especially doctoral students, much of the academic preparation has already been accounted for and social integration is often seen as secondary. The current study follows a cohort of new doctoral students through an orientation course, collecting relevant demographic data, and tracking them through completion of their dissertations.