A report on how the university can improve the experience of its first-year students is expected to be on Chancellor Sam Goldman’s desk by mid-March, program directors said.

A 26-person committee charged with creating a more supportive experience for new students is expected to release a report that suggests and recommends new and innovative ways to better the university’s First Year Experience program.

The committee will also hear smaller reports from nine sub-committees, which have each focused on a different area of students’ experiences, said Mark Amos, co-liaison of the program.

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Each committee will write a report of its findings and those reports will be combined into a document of suggestions that will be given to the chancellor, said Amos, an associate professor of English.

Amos said the committees have spent a long time collecting data about the university before drawing any conclusions.

‘It’s a data-driven process,’ he said, ‘At the moment, we’re in the self-study phase.’

The data collection has been extensive, and includes two campus-wide surveys, said John Nicklow, a member of the First Year Project steering committee.

The First Year Experience Project is a national effort run by the Foundation of Excellence to increase first-year students’ success rate at college campuses across the country.

SIUC is just one of 20 four-year institutions from around the country participating in the project.

According to the Foundation of Excellence’s Web site, the program was created because of the attention colleges and universities have paid to the first year has grown vastly because of multiple changes in demographic of students, concerns about the high rate of dropout that peaks between the first and second year and the recognition that the first year offers an opportunity to engage students in the habit of learning.

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Members of the university’s committee attended a series of Foundation of Excellence conferences, including one this month. Amos said the committee learned strategies for implementation of a first year project and compare progress with other schools.

‘We can measure our successes against the successes of other institutions,’ Amos said.

Though the project will hopefully raise freshman retention rates, Julie Kirchmeier, a co-liaison of the program, said the committee’s focus is mostly on promoting a positive first-year experience for students.

‘This is not a retention process,’ said Kirchmeier. ‘This is a student success process.’ And the positive outcome of that is that retention is increased.’

Kirchmeier and Amos expect to suggest large and small changes for the campus’ program.

Nicklow suggested the possibility of a center designed specifically for first-year students.’ Students could go to the center for help finding other resources on campus.

Kirchmeier said a large part of the job of supporting first-year students would be guiding them to already existing resources.

‘It’s not that we haven’t been doing things to support our first-year students because we have,’ Amos said. ‘We just haven’t been pulling it together.’