THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 28, 1996 TAG: 9610280045
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 117 lines
Over pizza and sodas last week, computer science lecturer Dennis E. Ray got to the point with a handful of Old Dominion University freshmen eating lunch in his lab.
How did they do on the last exam in their calculus class? he asked.
Their grades ranged from A to D.
He asked if they needed to review anything in math, but they said they were OK. ``Remember,'' he said, ``that's what we're here for: to try to help.''
For the next hour, Ray touched on a potpourri of subjects - from reminders to set clocks back over the weekend to suggestions to consider summer courses - regularly asking the group for questions.
One of the students, Matt Glaves, got a bit of good news for his future. He wondered if computer majors had to take Linear Algebra. ``Someone said it's really hard,'' said Glaves, 20, of Vienna.
No, it wasn't required, Ray said, but Glaves still should consider it. ``It depends if you like math,'' Ray said. ``I thought it was great. It's fuuun.''
Ray leads one of ODU's 29 ``learning communities'' in a new university pilot program this fall to help freshmen smooth the transition from high school to college and raise the odds that they will stay through graduation. The idea is to encourage closer connections with fellow classmates, and with professors, so the students don't fall through the cracks.
About 500 students - roughly one-third of the freshman class - have chosen to participate in the communities this fall.
This is how they generally work: To help students relate to one another, they are grouped by academic interest - from computer science to criminal justice to ``undecided.'' The groups range in size from a half-dozen to three dozen students.
The students in each community take two to three courses in common. In one of the courses, they are the only students in the class. The professor of that course generally serves as the leader of the community, keeping tabs on the students.
The leader also holds a weekly non-credit meeting with the students - such as Ray's pizza sessions Thursday afternoons - to help spot problems and keep up with their academic track record. Often, an upperclassman or graduate student sits in to provide guidance.
``It's made the whole transition from high school to college easier,'' said Marcia Pope, 18, of Richmond, a student in a liberal-arts community. ``I hear a lot of students complaining, and I don't have any of those complaints.''
ODU's provost, Jo Ann Gora, who spearheaded the program, said: ``The whole point of this is to help students be successful. We want students to feel that they're part of a community - both an academic community and a social community.''
Most important, Ray said, is the chance students get to connect with one another.
Sheila Pyatt, an 18-year-old freshman from Norfolk in Ray's group, said: ``If I wasn't in this, I'd be by myself, isolated.'' Now she studies daily with two other students in the community - Henry Herman and Sherida Whindleton.
Glaves said it gives him incentive to go to class each day. ``It helps me get out of bed,'' he said. ``If I miss a class, everyone will know.''
But Whindleton - an 18-year-old from outside Charlottesville - said some students in the group ``use it to stay in bed.'' They'll miss a class and later ask someone else in the community: ``Can I borrow your notes?''
The communities are analogous to the clusters common in middle schools, where several dozen students are placed in courses together to avoid some of the bumps on the road toward adolescence.
``The course-clustering model is not new,'' said Margaret A. Miller, associate director of the State Council of Higher Education. ``The reason people do this is that a community develops among students. It works the way study groups work. Students have some reason to talk to each other outside of class and about class, which is a very healthy development.''
Gora said a 1994 report showing that 42 percent of ODU freshmen ended up on academic probation prompted her to try something new.
``I decided our students needed more help getting adjusted to college life,'' she said. ``. . . Many students find it difficult to make friends the first semester. They have a difficult time knowing what's expected in class. They have to be more independent. A lot (of students) don't realize that until it's too late - when they're already in academic difficulty.''
A key component is the weekly non-graded session with the community leader.
Renee E. Olander's meetings with ``undecided'' liberal-arts students work somewhat differently than Ray's. Students hand in weekly reports on their mental and emotional development at school, and professors from various departments regularly visit to whet students' interest in their specialties.
Olander - the director of academic advising for the College of Arts and Letters - also wants to hear about their problems. During the second week of class, she heard several complain that they were lost in philosophy. The graduate assistant for the community spoke with the philosophy professor and later told the freshmen the professor's response: ``You're confused because you're supposed to be confused.'' It's not supposed to be easy stuff.
``But,'' Olander said, ``the students reported back after that meeting that they were communicating better with the professor.''
Karuna Chunchu, an 18-year-old freshman from Yorktown in Olander's group, said she wasn't crazy about joining at first. It sounded too much like high school. But ``now that I'm halfway through the semester, I know it's better for me,'' she said. ``I know everybody in class, and I know their study methods.'' And she's made a dozen friends in her community.
In Ray's session last week, he offered a smattering of advice: Think about taking summer courses. Bring in the spring course schedules when they come out. Find a quiet place to study.
``What else is there that's bothering you all?'' Ray asked. ``The only thing that's bothering me is where are the rest of the folks?'' Only five of the nine students showed up.
But that didn't deter Ray or the others. They were already talking about how they could stick together in the spring, even though the community program is designed to run only in the fall to get freshmen launched.
Gora said the university will study the results this school year to determine if the program benefits freshmen - and keeps more off probation. If it does, it will be continued.
Ray thinks it's already working: ``Is it going to be the panacea for all of our problems, such as retention? I don't think so. But it will sure help.'' ILLUSTRATION: MIKE HEFFNER
The Virginian-Pilot
ODU freshmen, from left, Sherida Whindleton, Henry Herman and Jason
Husk retrieve notes from the Internet Thursday. The students are
members of the same ``learning community.'' by CNB