ASI 150
The First Year Experience
Instructor: Kurt
Mosser
e-mail: kurt.mosser@notes.udayton.edu
Office: 417
Humanities
Phone: 229-2933 (office)
Office Hours: M/W 11:00-11:45 and by appointment
Student Mentor: Kurt
Blankschaen
e-mail: blankskm@notes.udayton.edu
Course Description: This
course is designed to help acclimate you into your college experience,
and intended to give you a sense of the skills that you will need to
become a successful student at UD. It is also intended to get you
thinking in proactive terms about how to best plan out and accomplish
your individual goals while here.
Grading: This is a pass/fail
course of one credit (that credit can be used toward graduation). I
will expect you to complete any assignments and of course attend class
in order to receive credit.
Program Goals
The following goals have been established by the University for
your entire First Year Experience. These goals are met when you
connect all aspects of your experience at UD. You will address
some of these goals in this course and through interaction with your
advisor. Others are met in the Humanities Base courses that you
take, in your Learning/Living community, and in other learning,
leadership, and service opportunities. Reflect on these goals as
you begin this first year in the College.
Catholic/Marianist Identity:
The First Year Experience program introduces the distinctive nature of
the Catholic/Marianist educational experience as a foundation for
learning and life.
Academics: The First Year
Experience provides an academic foundation that helps students develop
as connected learners, acquire the general competencies necessary for
their success, understand the nature and requirements of chosen and/or
potential programs of study, and be aware of a range of opportunities
for enriching their academic experience on campus, across the nation,
and around the world.
Learning in Community: The
First Year Experience prepares students to be active learners who
develop their knowledge, skills, and talents in collaboration and
through community, who respect the diversity of our common humanity,
and who are engaged in the world as nascent professionals, emerging
leaders, and persons of service.
Moral and Ethical Development:
The First Year Experience engages students in critical reflection on
the moral and ethical dimensions of their lives, challenges students to
treat each individual with equality and respect, fosters the
recognition of individual rights and responsibilities of each member of
the community, and establishes integrity as central to professional and
career decisions.
Building Learning Skills: The
First Year Experience promotes the development of self-understanding
and skills that enable students to take responsibility for their
academic success and lifelong learning.
Developing Your Talents: The
First Year Experience promotes and supports, both in and out of the
classroom, the physical, emotional, spiritual and psychological health
of all students; nurtures students creativity and varied talents; and
leads to enriched lives of learning, leisure, solitude, leadership, and
service.
Humanities Base General Competencies
Reading and Writing Competencies
Reading and writing effectively are essential to every student's
ability to succeed in college and in life. Well-developed reading
and writing skills enable students to learn new information, critically
examine its value and unity, share new insights with others, and act in
socially responsible ways. Humanities Base courses, especially
the English courses, help students develop general level academic
reading and writing skills. Upon completion of the Humanities
Base, students will be able to:
read, analyze, and evaluate
college-level non-fiction prose
read, analyze, and evaluate literary texts in light of the Humanities
Base themes
write college-level expository essays
write college-level argumentative essays
use emerging technologies in completing their research and writing
assignments
write essays for a variety of audiences
write essays for a variety of purposes
employ fundamental critical thinking skills
engage in basic research activities
Information Literacy Competencies
Information Literacy refers to a set of competencies for
acquiring, understanding, manipulating, deriving, generating, storing,
and presenting information for the purpose of problem analysis and
decision-making. The purpose of gaining these competencies is for
students to understand the importance of information and information
technology to their studies, career, and personal lives, and to empower
students to be proficient in an information society. Information
Literacy competencies allow students to be better scholars, to
understand the quality and usefulness of scholarship, to understand the
nature of an information-rich society, and to use a variety of
information sources and technologies for common information processing
in scholarship and life. The Humanities Base courses help
students:
develop effective strategies for using
information technologies when seeking knowledge.
understand the structure, form, and access methods of recorded
information.
demonstrate the ability to evaluate and analyze the information
gathered from a variety of sources.
use information and information technology responsibly and ethically.
demonstrate an interest in and ability for life-long learning about
information technology.
Academic Dishonesty: Student
academic dishonesty is defined as any attempt by the student to obtain,
or to assist another student to obtain, a grade higher than honestly
earned. You are responsible for any acts of cheating, plagiarism,
grade alterations, or deception to avoid meeting the stated course
conditions. The penalty for academic dishonesty in this course
will entail receiving a grade of “NC” for the course.
Plagiarism: The University of
Dayton Student Handbook defines plagiarism as any of the following:
Quoting directly from any source of material—including other students’
work and materials purchased from research consultants—without
appropriately citing the source and identifying the quoted material;
knowingly citing an incorrect source; using ideas (i.e. material other
than information that is common knowledge) from any source of
material—including other students’ work and materials purchased from
research consultants—without citing the source and identifying borrowed
material.
This includes but is not limited to copying without proper
documentation words, sentences, or phrases from any source, summarizing
without proper documentation ideas from any source, borrowing facts,
statistics, or phrases without acknowledging the source, collaborating
on a graded assignment without the instructor’s approval, and
submitting work, either whole or in part, that has been created by
someone else (professional service, friend, parent, etc.). This also
includes information found on any online/internet source or site,
and/or submitting work done for another class. I expect you to do new
and original work for this class. Do not use outside materials for this
course (the exception would be the Research Paper); the thoughts and
ideas contained in your papers should be your own, developed from our
in-class discussions. Rather than turning to outside sources to
understand these works, you need to build and develop your ability to
interpret and analyze texts on your own—this, after all, is one of the
goals of the class: learning to interpret and analyze texts and then to
cogently write about them. I consider plagiarism a serious
transgression; it is an attempt to circumvent the skills you are
ostensibly here to learn. Documented cases of plagiarism will result in
an F grade for the class. This includes response papers.
Disabilities: To request
academic accommodations due to disability, please contact the Office of
Students with Disabilities, 002 Albert Emanuel Hall, (937) 229-3684. If
you have a self-identification form indicating that you have a
disability which requires academic accommodation, please present it to
me after class so that we can discuss it.
Schedule (tentative)
August 24 (3:00 pm): Orientation meeting
August 27 Introduction and address any concerns
September 10 Picking a major: meet in Sears Auditorium (Philips
Humanities Building, First Floor)
September 24 Majors Fair for UNA/UNS – VWK Ground Floor
October 8 No course meeting
October 15 Gen Ed presentation for BS – SC Auditorium
October 22 Gen Ed presentation for BA - Sears
October 29 Getting ready for registration
November 5 Career Services Presentation Sears for B.A.; SC Aud.
For B.S.
November 19 Getting down to registration: last questions,
schedules, etc..
WEBSITES (Just cut and paste the address into your browser)
UD WEBSITES
http://learningsupport.udayton.edu
http://bulletin.udayton.edu
http://webadvisor.udayton.edu
http://campus.udayton.edu/~studev/studenthandbook
http://bookstore.udayton.edu
https://register.udayton.edu/login.asp
www.ratemyprofessors.com
ANXIETY ‐ MATH
www.mtsu.edu/~devstud2/anxiety.html
www.mathacademy.com/pr/minitext/anxiety
ANXIETY ‐ TEST
http://www.counsel.ufl.edu/selfHelpInformation/academicAndCareerConcerns/test_anxiety.aspx
http://www.counselingcenter.illinois.edu/?page_id=114
www.testtakingtips.com/anxiety/index.htm
CONCENTRATION
www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infocs/study/concentration.html
www.ucc.vt.edu/stdysk/control.html
COUNSELING
http://campus.udayton.edu/~cc/otherResources/UD_Links.html
http://campusblues.com
www.depression‐screening.org
www.drbalternatives.com/articles/
www.nmha.org
www.suicidehotlines.com/national.html
My approach to this course is to treat you
as an adult, responsible for your own choices, both academically and
otherwise.
You should consider myself, and Kurt
Blankschaen, as resources. If you have an issue, we will try to address
it; if you have
a question, we will try to answer it.
If we can't, we will know someone who can.
We want you to have a successful,
productive, and enjoyable first year at the University of Dayton. You
should use us in
order to help you acheive that
result. Do not hesitate to contact us, but you should also realize that
there are a number of
things that we expect you to be able
to do yourself. You probably expect the same.
If you have read this and agree, e-mail me with the message "I'm cool, Mr.
Mosser."
If you have read this and disagree, e-mail me and explain why you don't, and we can
discuss it.