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Strong Start Initiative
How can we ensure that students begin their GVSU career with a strong start? This initiative focuses faculty attention on best practices for engaging students in first-year and second-year undergraduate courses. If you are interested in learning more about the initiative or would like to strengthen your courses to best engage incoming students, do not hesitate to contact us. Direct inquiries to David Eick, Pew FTLC Faculty Fellow.
GVSU Resources
- Tips for Teaching First Year Students at GVSU - a document prepared as part of the Strong Start Initiative
- My Laker Success - a new website that was developed as part of the Student Success Network that helps students navigate their first year in college. Encourage your students to bookmark this page
- Join a Fall 2021 Strong Start Initiative Faculty Learning Community - an in-person and and a virtual option available
- As COVID lingers, we're uncertain as to what teaching will be like in 2021-22, nor do we know what our students will be like—traumatized, resilient, or both. To meet the challenge of teaching COVID-disrupted students, especially (but not limited to) the incoming cohort, let's bone up on what Paolo Freire called 'praxis', the amalgam of an over-arching philosophy and politics of teaching plus the ways in which we enact this vision. In this FLC, we will read and discuss two books: first, for inspiration in these fraught times, Kevin Gannon's Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto (West Virginia UP, 2020). Then, for applicable best practices, Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons From the Science of Learning, by James Lang (Jossey-Bass, 2016).
General Resources
- Teaching First-Year Students, a guide prepared by the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University
- Best Practices for Teaching First-Year Undergraduates, a PDF guidebook of best practices compiled by faculty at Carnegie Mellon University
- Suggestions for teaching first-year students, University of Wisconsin Madison
- How College Works: A thought-provoking book that identifies important aspects of the college experience vital to student success.
- The book is available as an eBook through University Libraries
- A brief interview with author Daniel F. Chambliss
- A series of videos that summarizes some of the findings from the book
- 33 Simple Strategies for Faculty: A Week-by-Week Resource for Teaching First-Year and First-Generation Students, Lisa Nunn
- The book is available as an eBook through University Libraries
- Publishers website
Fall 2021 Resources
- The Other Freshman Class, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 24, 2021
- Creating a Culture of Caring: Practical Approaches for College and University Faculty to Support Wellbeing and Mental Health, ACUE
- Trauma-Aware Teaching Checklist, Karen Costa
- On Grief & Loss: Building a Post-Pandemic Future for Higher Ed without Losing Sight of Our Students and Ourselves, Joshua Eyler Keynote recording, Plymouth State University
- COVID keepers: The teaching strategies we should hold onto after the pandemic ends, Letitia Basford, Hamline University
- Leading Groups Online: A down-and-dirty guide to leading online courses, meetings, trainings, and events during the coronavirus pandemic, Jeanne Rewa and Daniel Hunter, a free eBook with some excellent general advice and specific activities for engagement