more on freshman year in college

from Karen A:

I teach a class at the college level for first semester freshmen. It's intentionally designed as a process course and is targeted at students who think they want to major in business. However, students have to accumulate a certain GPA with a certain number of credit hours before they are admitted to the College of Business (COB). In the meantime, they are taking gen ed courses, and other required courses that serve as prerequisites, such as the managerial and financial accounting classes.

The course itself has multiple goals: we want to introduce them to the standards and expectations that the COB has for its students, we want to cover each of the substantative areas involved (accounting, finance, insurance, management, technology, marketing, international business, ethics, etc.), so that the students have an understanding of what a business degree involves, and we want to introduce them to the Career Center and get them started thinking about what job opportunities might be available with certain majors and the steps that they need to be taking to make their goals become a reality.

With first semester freshmen, I also talk with them quite a bit about the expectations of professors and how college is not the same as high school. For example, professors actually expect that students will read the Syllabus.

Some students are going through a tremendous adjustment. For almost all of them, they are on their own for the first time: mom (or dad) isn't there to get them up in the morning and make sure they get to class, and mom's not there to nag them to get to bed on time and to eat healthily and to remember to exercise.

For some, this freedom is overwhelming, and quite frankly, some of them have to learn some painful lessons the hard way. I always talk to them about how hard it is to dig out of a hole of a lousy first semester GPA. Some students don't have good study habits; some just aren't interested. Most of them admit to being procrastinators; it's just that they aren't very effective at it. It takes a lot of practice and skill to become good at procrastination.

I also ask them to think about and focus on why they are at college; what are their expectations, why are they here, etc. Quite frankly, some of them have no idea; it was just the next step after high school. Others are quite focused and know exactly what they want to accomplish.

I also talk with them about the accounting and finance courses. These courses are tough courses substantively. Accounting is cumulative; most students need to do the homework on a daily basis, and actually start studying well before the first test. And, if they don't do well on the first test, the outlook isn't good for the remainder of the semester (without significant changes) because they don't have the foundation in place. It may be seen as a "gatekeeper" class, but there are reasons for that. Accounting is the language of business, and if students can't gain minimal proficiency, we're not willing to rubber stamp their diploma.

Separate and apart from the "survival" issues (and yet intertwined as well) are whether the students have sufficient background knowledge in the first place. I require my first year students to do a lot of writing; the assignments are varied in length and have multiple purposes. I spend a lot of time at the beginning of the semester making sure that they fully understand what my expectations are in that regard. You don't want to staple your paper? Fine, but after a grace period, you are going to lose points. You don't use complete sentences? You will lose points. However, I go to great pains to follow my procedures, and part of that process includes a lot of what I will call direct teaching, with lots of examples.

To be frank, some (perhaps most) students catch on pretty quick. Others don't, for a variety of reasons. But the bottom line, and I tell them this, is that I want them to succeed.



job placement after college

Catherine again: Slightly off-topic, I have a question about business majors.

What is job placement like with a degree in business areas?

And: what are the various business majors??

Thanks!