First Year Experience
Recent high school graduates will participate in a First-Year Experience program that is designed to help the incoming student maximize the first year by becoming comfortable on campus, connecting with the university and the local community, and meeting and developing new friendships with other students and faculty. The first-year student follows a curriculum that provides a learning community designed to ensure that the student obtains the needed academic skills to be a successful student. In the first-year courses, the student is also encouraged to become aware of the learning and communication styles in order to promote more authentic learning and improved communication in addition to learning effective techniques for stress and time management, self-motivation and goal setting. The learning community design allows all first-year students to have virtually the same schedule in order to encourage community-building and educational persistence.
All first-year students take a course entitled University Seminar 100 (SEMR 100), “Cornerstone.” This semester-long, credit-bearing course highlights the importance of study skills, time management, learning styles, stress management, self-motivation and goal setting. It exemplifies the importance the University places on assisting students along an academic and career path that leads to a productive life of learning and exploration. A distinctive feature of the HU experience is that in each subsequent year of enrollment at the University, students take another University Seminar course (200,300,400)—“Steppingstone,” “Keystone,” “Capstone.” Each builds on the previous work exploring new topics such as e-Portfolio development, career planning, interview techniques, contemporary ethical issues, civic engagement, and the integration of students’ curricular, experiential, and co-curricular activities into an academic and professional identity.