The freshman experience at UD changed significantly this year, thanks to the expansion of an innovative program that helps first-year students lay the groundwork for a successful academic career.

Fall 2005 marked the first time that all freshmen were required to participate in the First Year Experience, an approach in which new students enroll in one of four programs, all designed to ease their transition to University life and learning.

“I was so busy thinking about what I wanted to major in and about not knowing anyone else on campus that I probably never would have looked into taking part in this program if it hadn’t been required,” freshman Victoria Jempty says. “But, I ended up really liking it. I liked the classes and the project my group did, and the way it was set up made it easy for me to meet other freshmen and find a group of friends.”

Jempty took part in the largest of the four First Year Experience programs, known as LIFE, for Learning Integrated Freshman Experience. LIFE participants are assigned to groups of about 22 freshmen with the same major or academic interest area—in Jempty’s case, nutrition and dietetics.

Members of each group, or cluster, live in close proximity unless they are commuters, take at least one class together and also meet weekly with an upperclassman known as a peer mentor. At those meetings, the peer mentor leads discussions and activities related to campus life, academics and policies, and the students design and complete a special project related to their shared academic interest. Jempty’s cluster, for example, studied the nutritional research that has been conducted on milk and other dairy products and designed a presentation summarizing the findings.

Current and retired faculty and professional staff also lend their support, expertise and experience to LIFE participants and peer mentors by serving as LIFE mentors. Each cluster has such a mentor, who serves as a resource to the group and meets with the students periodically.

Last fall, 1,779 first-year students on the Newark campus participated in nearly 100 LIFE clusters, says program coordinator Meghan Biery. In addition, 320 students in the University’s Associate in Arts Program, which meets on the three campuses of Delaware Technical and Community College, took part.

For students who don’t enroll in LIFE,  other First Year Experience programs are First Year Seminars, University Honors Program and Pathways courses. (See sidebar on page 5.) Those programs drew a total of about 1,800 freshmen last fall.

This year’s LIFE clusters focused on a wide variety of academic areas, from animal science to economics, philosophy to athletic training. Projects also ran the gamut, including such group activities as volunteering in a soup kitchen, taking apart electrical and computer equipment to analyze the components, visiting a prison and meeting with inmates, teaching lessons on poetry to young schoolchildren, creating an informative web site about marine creatures of the Delaware coast, collecting thousands of books for hurricane-damaged schools in New Orleans and spending time with people who have disabilities.

Each group arrived at its project idea through brainstorming sessions, and the students and peer mentors generally say the end result was educational and fun.

“My cluster was different from most because it was students who were in the associate degree program, and because they hadn’t declared majors, they didn’t necessarily have any interests in common,” says Marilisa Mendoza, peer mentor for the group that collected 5,000 books to help New Orleans schools rebuild their libraries. “At first, I thought that was a big challenge, but it turned out that we had more freedom because it was so open-ended. We could just focus on whatever topic was of interest to the group, and it worked very well.”

Because the Gulf Coast hurricanes so dominated the news in the fall, Mendoza says, a public service project to help residents of that area was a natural. The students collected, sorted and boxed books and delivered them to the Red Cross for distribution in New Orleans. The project had special significance for freshman Andrea Pappa.

“My mom’s family lives in New Orleans, and some of the books went to the same elementary school where my cousins had gone,” Pappa says. “I think the project meant more to me than to anyone else in the class.”

Conrado (Bobby) Gempesaw, UD’s vice provost for academic and international programs, says a key result of the program is that the members of a cluster learn how to work as a team, in their class meetings and in devising and carrying out the group project, which is a skill they will need throughout college and in their careers. Gempesaw was a member of the Faculty Senate committee that discussed and developed the First Year Experience and LIFE programs in the late 1990s.

“I am very pleased with its growth from a concept at that time to what it has become today,” he says. “It is very gratifying to see that the program is now one of the signature experiences of a University of Delaware undergraduate education.”

That growth of the LIFE program was evidenced in December, when nearly 1,800 participants exhibited the results of their 90-plus projects at the sixth annual LIFE Fest gathering at the Bob Carpenter Center. By contrast, the first LIFE Fest, held in December 2000, drew only about 115 students from 11 clusters.

Like the New Orleans book drive, many of this year’s projects featured a community service component, with various clusters leading activities for patients at a children’s hospital, sharing the fun of reading with youngsters at a community center,  performing Shakespeare for residents of an assisted living community and holding fund-raisers for charitable organizations.

One such fund-raiser was planned, promoted and carried out by a cluster of business students, most of them planning to major in finance. The group came up with a “Wing Bowl” event in which competing groups of freshmen vied to see who could eat the most buffalo chicken wings in a set amount of time. Proceeds from the event were donated to a nonprofit cancer research organization.

“The students all brainstormed ideas, and they decided to do a fund-raiser, but they wanted to do something a little different than selling T-shirts or bumper stickers,” peer mentor Jason Vecchione, BE ’06, says. “The goal was to bring the freshman community together for a good cause, and the Wing Bowl was an event that everybody got excited about.”

Kevin Shalley, a freshman in the cluster, says the project called for organizational skills, teamwork, budgeting and marketing. Besides that, he says, “It was fun. It was something we all agreed that we wanted to do.”

Peer mentor Sarah Burrows’ group also decided on a project that involved community service. The freshmen, who all had an interest in the College of Health Sciences’ athletic training program, decided they wanted to work with Special Olympics. They found a group of Special Olympics athletes who bowled together, met them at the lanes one weekend and conducted a health fair for them.

“It wasn’t a real complicated project, but everybody enjoyed it,” Burrows, CHS ’06, says.

“Because the University has such close ties to Special Olympics, it was a good way for us to get familiar with the organization early on,” freshman Erica Braun says.

Other LIFE projects were more closely tied to academic research. A cluster that worked with Roland Roth, a retired professor of entomology and wildlife biology who volunteered his help with the program, investigated the germs and bacteria found in the world around them. A group of psychology students created a survey to determine the effect of music on mood, and a sociology cluster investigated the issue of AIDS in Delaware.

Another cluster, all electrical and computer engineering majors, studied how various appliances and pieces of computer equipment work by disassembling them. “We discussed a lot of possible projects, including field trips, but the idea of taking things apart and studying the components to figure out how they work sounded good to everyone,” peer mentor Tyrone Jeffress, EG ’06, says.

In addition to projects, peer mentors plan other activities to help freshmen adjust to college life. Many groups had discussions and heard speakers on such topics as study skills, time management, drug and alcohol issues, and University policies and procedures. Some peer mentors devised scavenger hunts to help the freshmen learn their way around campus, and others assigned tasks such as using the UD Library and creating a résumé that could be used in applying for summer jobs or internships.

Like many other peer mentors, Burrows says she didn’t participate in LIFE herself as a freshman but volunteered to be a mentor because of her positive feelings about the program. “It sounded like a great way to help first-year students,” she says. “I had my freshmen do the kinds of things I wish somebody had made me do—like go to the library and look up a book before I needed one at the last minute.”

The program has a social aspect as well. Especially for students who come to UD knowing few or no others on campus, being part of a LIFE cluster introduces them immediately to a group with shared academic interests. Living in the same residence hall facilitates both studying and socializing together, as well.

Christopher Davis, AS ’08, also was not a LIFE participant as a freshman but became a peer mentor because he “loved the idea that I would be able to work with students my own age and potentially have an impact on their lives.”

His group explored various aspects of psychology as a career, visiting psychiatric facilities in Baltimore and Delaware and assisting with research by administering surveys to collect data. “The students in my class were a wonderful, bright group of students who took initiative like nothing I have ever seen before,” Davis says.

Another key to making the LIFE program a growing success is the role of nearly 90 LIFE mentors who help peer mentors in facilitating classes and activities for the freshmen. LIFE mentors are current and retired faculty and professional staff who are involved in UD’s academic mission.

While not responsible for the day-to-day conduct of the weekly LIFE classes, they help peer mentors plan the semester and also meet monthly with students in the LIFE cluster and assist in leading class discussions on that day. They might also help bring in guest speakers and organize field trips and the group projects.

Lesa Griffiths, professor of animal nutrition in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and director of the University’s Center for International Studies, has served several semesters as a LIFE mentor and says she enjoys the interaction with the participants. 

“I find the students in the LIFE program jump into their freshman year with a little more confidence in themselves,” Griffiths says. “They don’t let the big class size overwhelm them, and they are eager to introduce themselves, to ask questions and to seek help when they need it.”

Many of the questions asked by LIFE students are directly related to their major, course content and career options, she says, calling the program a great opportunity for students to broaden their academic experience and for faculty to interact with students.

“Most students come to the animal science major with veterinary medicine as their career of choice. However, that is often because they don’t really understand the scope of animal and food sciences,” Griffiths says. “As they begin to think about other options, they will come to me and talk about how one pursues a career that they never knew existed.”

Thomas Johnston, an instructor in the Lerner College of Business and Economics, says that watching the students make their project presentations during LIFE Fest was a rewarding experience.

“I could see that these once shy students were now out in front of their peers who did not participate in the LIFE experience,” Johnston says. “Our students were now more mature, outgoing and confident. They could not wait to talk about their project to anyone who stopped by their booth.”

Besides helping new students make the most of their first-year experience at UD, the LIFE program also offers students a chance to participate in study abroad.

“We have two programs that go to Mexico and Australia during Winter Session. We take about 18 to 22 students including a peer mentor,” Biery says. “Freshmen are typically hesitant to go abroad, but when they find that a peer mentor is going, it really enhances the whole program.”

She says study abroad has been a very popular and positive experience for LIFE program participants and that it often inspires them to want to continue the experience throughout their college career.

“They get the study abroad bug as freshmen and find they still have plenty of time left before graduation to do it again,” Biery says.

Provost Dan Rich says that LIFE and the other First Year Experience programs bring not only freshmen but the entire UD community together. "Upperclassmen serve as peer mentors, and faculty, professional staff and administrators, as well as retired faculty,  serve as senior mentors," Rich says. "This all helps new students recognize the rich diversity of learning opportunities at the University."