Your College Experience: Strategies for Success

Written by the leading authorities on the first-year seminar and grounded in research, Your College Experience offers students practical help in making the transition to college and getting the most out of their time there. Speaking with evident respect for students at all kinds of institutions, with all kinds of learning styles, and with all kinds of backgrounds, the authors ask them to consider their own goals, and their purposes for being in college. Particularly relevant to today’s students, a new Money chapter discusses managing money, building credit, and financing college. A new chapter on Emotional Intelligence helps students recognize their own strengths and weaknesses so they can understand themselves better and direct their own path. A fresh, clean new design eliminates clutter so that students can focus on the important topics.

John N. Gardner brings unparalleled experience as an author. The recipient of his institution's highest award for teaching excellence, John has over 40 years of experience directing and teaching in the most widely emulated first-year seminar in the country, the University 101 course at the University of South Carolina (USC), Columbia. John is universally recognized as one of the country's leading educators for his role in initiating and orchestrating an international reform movement to improve the beginning college experience, a concept he coined as "the first-year experience." He is the founding executive director of the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition at USC, the Policy Center on the First Year of College and most recently the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education (www.jngi.org), the latter two based in Brevard, N.C.

Jerome Jewler is a best-selling author, educator, and friend to students. A distinguished professor emeritus of the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies as well as codirector of the University 101 first-year seminar at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, Jewler has guided advertising students through the creative and writing processes and has helped hundreds of new students determine their goals. As University 101 codirector, he planned and conducted training workshops for first-year seminar instructors, won a Mortar Board award for teaching excellence, and was recognized as USC advisor of the year and nationally as the Distinguished Advertising Educator nationally in 2000.

Betsy O. Barefoot is a writer, researcher, and teacher whose special area of scholarship is the first-year seminar. During her tenure at USC from 1988 to 1999, she served as codirector for research and publications at the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition. She also taught University 101 and graduate courses on the first-year experience and the principles of college teaching. She conducts first-year seminar faculty training workshops around the world and is frequently called on to evaluate first-year seminar outcomes. Betsy is codirector and senior scholar in the Policy Center on the First Year of College and Vice President of the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education both in Brevard, N.C. In her Policy Center role she led a major national research project to identify institutions of excellence in the first college year. She currently works with both two- and four-year campuses in evaluating all components of the first year.