FYC Linked Courses

In addition to the FYC residential staff,one of the special benefits for some of our students in the FYC Village (Tucker/Owen) is our "linked" courses. In an effort to link the out-of-the-classroom experience with the in-class, the First Year College has joined forces with the First Year Inquiry (FYI) program. For the 2004-05 academic year, 10 FYI courses were selected for enrollment for the first 200 students to apply to live in the FYC Village. As with all FYI courses, the enrollment for each course is capped at 20 first-year students. However, not only are these students living together and taking one of these FYI courses, but they will also be concurrently enrolled in the same USC 101A (required FYC course, Introduction to University Education), which is taught by their FYC Academic Adviser. Therefore, the students will be taking two academic courses at the same time…TOGETHER! The faculty member teaching the FYI course and the Adviser work together to find connective tissue between their course content, which oftentimes results in collaborative and in some cases overlapping classroom activities and graded assignments. Oftentimes, these courses are offered back-to-back, which provides an opportunity for continued classroom content and time for field trips. It is also quite common for the FYI faculty member to attend the USC class his/her schedule permits. Likewise, the FYC Adviser will often attend the FYI course with the students which continues to support a seamless learning community. All of the "linked" courses will meet a General Education Requirement needed toward graduation.

In addition to the benefit of having these courses together, all USC 101A courses and several of the FYI courses are taught in either the Tucker or Owen classrooms, both of which are located on the ground floor of each of the residential areas.

Past examples of FYI courses that are a part of our Village are: ENT203: Honey Bee and Beekeeping; CH 102: the complementary problem session for the CH 101 lecture course; HI 251: Early American History; HI 205: Western Civilization since 1400; MDS 201: Environmental Ethics; MDS 302: Science, Technology and Human Values; PSY 201: Controversial Issues in Psychology; PS 201: Introduction to U.S.Government; and SOC 204: Sociology of the Family.

The FYI courses are all taught by NC State faculty who are dedicated to undergraduate instruction (instruction of first-year students in particular) and who have designed their courses to inspire small group discussion and critical thinking.

The 2001-02 academic year was the first year we offered these "linked" courses and one of the unexpected impacts we encountered was on the students' grade point average, which showed a statistically significant increase when compared to other FYC students. Our continued data-driven assessment has reveled that students who take a “linked” course have statistically significant greater GPA’s than those students not in link.  We’ve also found that students in the Village are completing more academic hours.  . Our hope is that as the popularity of these "linked" courses increases, we will be able to offer this opportunity to all of our FYC students living in the Village.

This page last updated by mmrust - January 22, 2008 3:23 PM