Patrick P. Frost and Dr. Stefinee Pinnegar, Teacher Education

In an effort to help incoming freshman make a successful transition to university life, BYU created Freshman Academy. Freshman Academy is a one semester program in which students register for an envelope of core classes. The same group of students attends all of the classes within the envelope. These groups of students are called learning communities. For each learning community, Freshman Academy provides a peer mentor that works with the students. A peer mentor is an upper classman that has shown academic success, has taken many of the classes that are in the community, and is familiar with campus resources. Peer mentors act as a guide and a friend. Freshman Academy hopes that students participating in the program will make many beneficial connections with each other and faculty members as well as with campus resources. Strong social support by peers and faculty at the university significantly influence a student’s adjustment to college. Students who have strong support from faculty and other students have lower dropout rates and better GPA’s (Martin Jr et al., 1999). One study found that having good connections to other first year students provided both social and academic support (Yazedjian et al., 2007). These relationships among students also lead to a strong sense of attachment to the institution (Yazedjian et al., 2007).

Because of the many benefits that come from making connections during a student’s first semester of college, Freshman Academy wanted to determine if the students currently participating in the program were making connections. That was the focus of my study. Through this study we created sociograms to analyze the relationships that students in the program were forming. We also tested the hypothesis that (1) other students within the community would be a significant source of socialization and study for the respondents, (2) even after the semester was over, students within the community would continue to socialize and study with each other, and (3) peer mentors would be a significant source of help for the students.

In order to collect the data we created an online survey using Qualtrics, an online survey company. In the survey we used the free recall name generator system. This system has been one of the important ways sociologists have analyzed networking and community (Hogan et al., 2007) (Wellman, 1979). We surveyed the five theme based communities within the Freshman Academy program. In the survey we asked students to list up to five people they socialize with, five people they study with, and five people they feel like they could go to for help. We also asked the students to categorize the people they listed so we could determine how they knew the person. The possible categories students could choose from included (1) family, (2) classmate, (3) ward, (4) work, (5) roommate, (6) knew before I came to BYU, and (7) other. After they had indicated their relationship with this person we asked them for the frequency of the interaction. We wanted analyze how the relationships changed over the course of the first semester so we distributed the survey at two times. The first wave was distributed on October 14, 2009. The second wave was distributed to students on January 5, 2010. The last day of finals was December 18, 2009, so the students were no longer participating in Freshman Academy at the time of the second survey. Sixty students responded to the second wave of surveys.

After the data was collected, I performed a one sample T-test on all of the variables to see which were significantly greater that zero, and also to allow us to see the difference in the means so that
we could have a better idea of which categories were the most popular in each situation (socialize, study, and help). We also ran frequencies to check this.

Looking over the sociograms I noticed a few trends. First, roommates and ward members dominated in the category of socialization. Second, students most often study with classmates and other students within their Freshman Academy community. Third, family and ward members were the most significant sources of help for the respondents.

After completing my analysis, I can see many positive things about the Freshman Academy program. First, in accordance with my hypothesis, students in the Freshman Academy program socialize and study with each other. These are key steps in forming relationships with each other. Second these relationships continue even after their participation in the program has ended. This tells us that the relationships that they have formed are meaningful and long lasting. However, my hypothesis that peer mentors would be a significant source of help was weakly supported at best.

I think that there are several important lessons that Freshman Academy could learn from my research. First of all, there could be very positive effects of a living/learning community. Roommates and ward members played a key role in almost all of the types of relationships that I examined (socialize, study, and help). If the students within a community lived with each other, many more meaningful relationships could be formed, thus forming a stronger community and more connections to help the student adjust to college. The second lesson for Freshman Academy is to be aware that some students will be fully immersed in their community and will make many connections while others will remain distant students. I think that a good strategy is to talk to the immersed students and see if they can help the distant students become involved. Third, peer mentors must make themselves visible early in the semester and often. They need to clarify their role, and let students know that they are there to help. Lastly, peer mentors need to make sure that students know where they can go to get help. Helping the students better understand where they can find help will hopefully lead to stronger connections and better students.

I created a thorough report of all of my findings and distributed it to all of the staff members of Freshman Academy. I gave them a copy of all of the sociograms that I created and I also gave a 15 minute presentation to all the peer mentors and staff members at Freshman Academy to inform them of my study, findings, and suggestions for improvement.

References

• Hogan B., Carrasco J.A., Wellman B. (2007) Visualizing personal networks: Working with participant-aided sociograms. Field Methods 19:116-144.
• Martin Jr W.E., Swartz-Kulstad J.L., Madson M. (1999) Psychosocial Factors That Predict the College Adjustment of First-Year Undergraduate Students: Implications for College Counselors. Journal of College Counseling 2:121.
• Wellman B. (1979) The Community Question: The Intimate Networks of East Yorkers. The American Journal of Sociology 84:1201-1231.
• Yazedjian A., Purswell K., Sevin T., Toews M. (2007) Adjusting to the First Year of College: Students’ Perceptions of the Importance of Parental, Peer, and Institutional Support. Journal of The First-Year Experience & Students in Transition 19:29-46.