CIC and the Policy Center on the First Year of College at Brevard College (NC) announced the 12 CIC institutions (out of 54 applicants) selected to participate in the “Foundations of Excellence in the First Year of College.”
     Participating institutions include Augsburg College (MN), Aurora University (IL), Columbia College (SC), Endicott College (MA), Franklin Pierce College (NH), Indiana Wesleyan University, Madonna University (MI), Maryville College (TN), Marywood University (PA), Nazareth College of Rochester (NY), Saint Edward’s University (TX), and University of Charleston (WV).
     The project focuses on the quality of experiences that institutions provide to first-year students. (For a fuller description of the project, see www.cic.edu/projects_services/coops/first-year.asp.) These 12 institutions will comprise a consortium that is testing standards of excellence in institutions that genuinely help first-year students to learn and succeed. “The project will produce, for the first time, a sector-specific, aspirational model for the first year of college and a method to evaluate campus achievement of these foundations,” said project director John Gardner, a nationally recognized expert on first-year experience programs. Participating institutions will assess and make improvements in their own programs, and will receive campus visits by national experts on first-year programs and in instructional strategies.
     The project is funded by the Atlantic Philanthropies and Lumina Foundation for Education.

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Last updated: December 2003
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