Your College Experience Strategies for Success

Written by the leading authorities on the first-year seminar and grounded in research, Your College Experience by John Gardner and Betsy Barefoot offers today’s diverse students the practical help they need to make the transition to college and get the most out of their time there. While maintaining its hallmark theme of goal setting, the Eleventh Edition reflects a focus on practical strategies across all topics of the book to help students be successful from the start. Chapters on Time Management, Communication and Information Literacy, and Careers and Majors have all been thoroughly updated to fully incorporate the tools and strategies students use on campus right now.

A full package of instructional support materials—including an Instructor’s Annotated Edition, Instructor’s Manual, PowerPoint slides, videos, and a Test Bank—provides new and experienced instructors all the tools they will need to engage students in this course and increase student retention. See what's in the LaunchPad

John N. Gardner brings unparalleled experience to students as an author. The recipient of his institution's highest award for teaching excellence, John has over forty years of experience directing and teaching in the most widely emulated first-year seminar in the country, the University 101 course at the University of South Carolina (USC), Columbia. John is universally recognized as one of the country's leading educators for his role in initiating and orchestrating an international reform movement to improve the beginning college experience, a concept he coined as "the first-year experience." He is the founding executive director of the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition at USC, as well as the Policy Center on the First Year of College and the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education (www.jngi.org), both based in Brevard, N.C. Betsy O. Barefoot is a writer, researcher, and teacher whose special area of scholarship is the first-year seminar. During her tenure at USC from 1988 to 1999, she served as codirector for research and publications at the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition. She also taught University 101 and graduate courses on the first-year experience and the principles of college teaching. She conducts first-year seminar faculty training workshops around the world and is frequently called on to evaluate first-year seminar outcomes. Betsy is codirector and senior scholar in the Policy Center on the First Year of College and Vice President of the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education both in Brevard, N.C. In her Policy Center role she led a major national research project to identify institutions of excellence in the first college year. She currently works with both two- and four-year campuses in evaluating all components of the first year.

Part I Foundations

1. Why Go to College?

2. Time Management

3. Emotional Intelligence

4. How You Learn

Part II Preparing to Study

5. Critical Thinking

6. Reading to Learn

7. Getting the Most Out of Class

8. Studying

9. Test-taking

10. Information Literacy and Communication

Part III Preparing for Life

11. Relationships

12. Diversity

13. Wellness

14. Money

Part IV Next Steps

15. Majors and Careers