The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 37, No. 1 - 17

Residence Life and First-Year Student Retention

Freshmen Class Shirts
When students arrive on campus for new student orientation, they are given a freshmen class shirt that clearly identifies them as a part of the incoming class. The goal of providing class shirts is to connect students with both their academic cohort and the university community. Each class shirt is printed with the name of the student’s residence hall on the front and the lyrics to the alma mater on the back. All freshman students are asked to wear their class shirt to Opening Convocation where the chancellor welcomes them to the university. Students wear their class shirts with pride throughout the remainder of their undergraduate career.

Realizing that students use Internetbased social networking Web sites to develop and maintain relationships, we utilize this technology to help us develop a virtual community for future residence hall floor-mates .

First Year Cup
In an effort to engage students in the life of the campus beyond New Student Orientation, we have created the First Year Cup. This program is a friendly competition that allows first-year students to compete in residence hall and commuter student teams based on attendance at selected programs throughout the year. Each semester, we identify 12-15 educational and social programs that students can attend to get points for their team. At the end of each semester, the group with the highest percentage of attendance from their team is awarded the First Year Cup Trophy.

ence. From the moment students arrive on campus and throughout their undergraduate education, they use the Outside the Classroom Curriculum as a vehicle to help them design, document, and demonstrate their holistic development in a number of critical areas that have been identified as helping to make them more marketable upon graduation. According to Sandeen (2004), academic affairs is no longer the sole purveyor of undergraduate learning experiences on our campuses. Recent years have seen the explosion of educational partnerships between academic and student affairs that help to extend learning beyond the traditional classroom walls. Weaver (2008) posits that the student learning experience in modern higher education is changing rapidly. And the non-linear student approach to education calls for us to find ways to integrate a student’s academic and cocurricular reality on campus. Consequently, institutions need to have a holistic approach to enhancing student learning. Over the course of the last few decades, student affairs professionals have advocated a holistic view of education, integrating the
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THe OUTsIDe THe cLAssROOM cURRIcULUM
Committed to the concept of the education of the whole student, the University of Pittsburgh is involved in the second year of a campus-wide initiative that integrates the academic and cocurricular student experi-

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 37, No. 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 37, No. 1
