Freshman Connections in the News

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The Policy Center on the First Year of College

Melinda M. Messineo
Freshman Connections
Department of Sociology
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306

Phone: 765.285.5530
Fax: 765.285.5920
freshmanconn@bsu.edu

The Freshman Connections Program at Ball State University has recently been recognized by various news organizations. Read below the full articles regarding Ball State University's Freshman Connections Program.

Freshman Connections Program Recognized by The Princeton Review

The Princeton Review featured Ball State as "one of the best college values in the nation," in the 2007 edition of America's Best Value Colleges. The guidebook highlighted "Ball State's success in building a sense of community, particularly through the Freshman Connections program, which places first-year students from the same residence hall in several of the same required courses."

News magazine ranks two Ball State programs among the nation's best

In the Best Colleges-2006 issue of U.S. News & World Report, Ball State's freshman programs are touted for the second year in a row as among the nation's best.

Freshman program named one of the nation's best

Ball State University has been recognized as one of the nation's best in helping freshmen succeed.

Ball State earns recognition for freshman programs

Ball State University has been selected as a semi-finalist in a national study to identify "Institutions of Excellence in the First College Year."

Book Highlights Freshman Programs

In 2002, The Policy Center on the First Year of College--with the assistance of The Pew Charitable Trust, The Atlantic Philanthropies, and the Lumina Foundation for Education--undertook a project to identify colleges and universities with exemplary programs for first-year students. Ball State was named one of those 13 exemplary institutions (see related news link to the left). Recently, Jossey-Bass publishers released the volume highlighting these 13 programs.

Two key passages in Ball State's chapter occur at the beginning and end:

"The answer to how this unique focus on first-year students came to be can be found in the extraordinary leadership of a core group of formal and informal campus leaders, the institutionalization of services to first-year students . . . , the partnerships between academic and student affairs, and the institution's ability to embrace teaching as a primary component of the institution's mission" (p. 299)
"Ball State is doing so much that is right that the major challenge is simply to continue the status quo" (p. 322)

For more information about this book and to read further excerpts, follow this link to the Jossey-Bass website.