The university has overhauled the Shared First-Year Experience program for incoming freshmen for the second year in a row.

Rather than a required book to read or a performance to attend, as in prior years, Syracuse University will be pushing the Class of 2014 to become involved in solving and talking about major socioeconomic and environmental issues in Syracuse through special events and class projects, said Sandra Hurd, associate provost for academic programs.

The new program is also part of a long-term initiative to strengthen SUís relationship with the city and create real change with the help of students.

‘The program promotes engaging with the community, but it’s not necessarily community service,’ Hurd said. ‘We can’t just send 3,300 students into the city. That would not be particularly educational for them. So what we’re doing is making it a step-by-step process.’

Freshmen will become active in the community through completing projects in their freshman forums and seminars, attending the University Lectures series that addresses relevant social issues and participating in special activities in their residence halls and learning communities.

For example, in the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science, freshmen will design a bus for the Open Hand Theater. The bus will act as a traveling stage for the theaterís puppet shows and will be built by a contractor once the design is complete, Hurd said.

The newly required multimedia course in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications will also encourage students to focus their storytelling projects on issues within the city, Hurd said.

Two years ago, SU required incoming students to read a book that was then used to varying degrees in freshman seminars. Last year, the university eliminated the book and replaced it with a Shen Wei dance performance that was also incorporated into some freshman classes.

Hurd said the new program is more versatile and broader so all the colleges can involve freshmen in ways appropriate to their area of study, whereas a book or a dance is not relevant to some majors.

‘We’re trying to launch something that different schools and colleges can work with,’ Hurd said. ‘You can’t just plan one thing and expect it to work equally well. They don’t have a first-year forum at (the College of Visual and Performing Arts), so you have to do it differently.’

For freshmen who don’t have a freshman seminar, the university will implement a more aggressive campaign to get students out into the community, such as encouraging tutoring for Say Yes to Education or volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, Hurd said.

‘You can’t force people to be engaged,’ she said. ‘It’s more about getting lots of opportunities out there. I think the books were good, but this offers more variety of opportunities and engages people who learn differently.’

Part of the motivation for starting this new First-Year Experience was feedback from upperclassmen who wished they had gotten involved in outside organizations sooner in their college career, said Greg Victory, director of the Office of First Year and Transfer Programs.

‘The goal is to provide a gateway to students to help solve community problems in a partnership, which is different than volunteering,’ Victory said.

This initiative pushes freshmen to work side by side with members of the community to solve problems like low graduation rates, community beautification and the energy crises, he said.

The push to get freshmen more involved in and aware of the city is part of a greater university goal established by the administration to become an anchor institution, which collaborates with the community to revitalize Syracuse, a struggling Rust Belt city.

The university has undertaken a series of projects – the Connective Corridor, the Center of Excellence, The Stand community paper and dozens of others – throughout the past decade to reverse the city’s decline.

‘It’s a hope that we have a culture shift at the university,’ Victory said. ‘It’s about students really seeing the application of the knowledge they are learning in classes.’

Kelly Criscione, an undecided freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, said the program sounds better than reading a book or going to a performance.

‘It sounds fun,’ she said. ‘I did a lot of volunteering in high school. I wanted to continue doing it in college. I like reading, but this sounds more rewarding.’

rastrum@syr.edu

Published on August 24, 2010 at 12:00 pm