Every fall before classes begin, incoming freshmen are urged to attend Freshmen Welcome Week at UTM.

During this week freshmen are able to familiarize themselves with the campus and also begin to take their very first college course: Freshmen Studies.

Although Freshmen Studies has not been a required course, professors urged students to take this class as an elective. In the past, Freshmen Studies has been offered as a Pass/Fail course. The class did not calculate into any student’s grade point average.

This school year is the first year this course is being offered as an A-F course and will calculate into students’ GPA’s. The decision to change the curriculum of the course was made last spring by members of the Faculty Senate.

Dr. George Daniel, director of the Student Success Center, answered many questions about how the new Freshmen Studies Class would work for freshmen.

“Historically, the class met some hours during Freshman Welcome Week and one hour per week during various parts of the first semester. In 2005 Fall Semester, GENS 101 is meeting two credit hours per week for the entire semester and is graded A-F,” Daniel said.

The format of the class has also undergone some changes. In the past students did not need a textbook or study materials for freshmen studies, but now some changes have been made.

The 2005 fall semester curriculum for GENS 101 is On Course: Strategies for Creating Success in College and Life. The course curriculum and text covers, “choices of successful students which include: accepting personal responsibility, discovering self-motivation, mastering self-management, employing interdependence, gaining self-awareness, adopting lifelong learning, developing emotional intelligence and belief in themselves.”

“Faculty mentors use the text and curriculum to design the course to fit the needs of students in their particular section of the course,” Daniels said. The instructor will make the overall rules of the class.

If a student has already taken Freshmen Studies, the Pass/Fail grade will stand unless they retake the course to receive a letter grade.

Daniels also said that GENS 101 has two components during the 2005 fall semester; a large group meeting of all sections in an academic college or group convenes once per week with a College/Group Leader and counts 30 percent of the grade.

Additionally, a small group meets once per week with a faculty mentor counts 70 percent of the grade.

In the past students’ majors decided which instructor they had for Freshmen Studies, and that will not change.

“Faculty mentors are primarily volunteers who indicate they wish to lead a section, they may be on a rotating teaching schedule within an academic department, or assigned by a department chair or dean.”