Indiana Alumni Magazine
Learning the Ropes
The Intensive Freshman Seminars offer an opportunity to take courses, make friends, and get ready for college.
by Lisa Schubert
It suddenly dawned on him: He was 2,100 miles away from home. He didn't know the town. He didn't know a soul. He didn't think he could do the work.
Sophomore Amish Patel spent his first weekend at Indiana University Bloomington wondering why he had dared to leave his native California.
A week later, he experienced a different kind of dare — running around the dorm hallway in his boxer shorts and Elmo slippers as a large group of friends cheered him on in a game of Truth or Dare.
Patel was starting to feel at home.
IFS professors Jonathan Plucker and Deborah Christiansen discuss how clothes express personality. Photo Tyagan Miller.
Through the Intensive Freshman Seminars, a three-week August program that offers incoming Bloomington freshmen a jump-start on their college careers, Patel met a group of friends, completed three hours of coursework, formed a relationship with a faculty member, and became acclimated to the campus.
"If it weren't for IFS, I think I would have failed first semester," he says. "IFS really woke me up with my time management. Also, I would have walked on campus not knowing how to handle a roommate, do my homework, find my way around. It would have been a lot harder."
Patel and his IFS peers have higher GPAs and are 5 to 6 percent more likely to graduate from IU in four years than their non-IFS counterparts, according to a 1997 study that tracked the progress of 6,000 IUB students.
That's due to the "very special, so supportive" small-college community in which IFS students are immersed, says Les Coyne, BS'64, MS'70, EdD'78, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs and extended programs, who has worked with the IFS program since its inception in 1990 and also served as its director. The IFS atmosphere prepares freshmen to embark on their college careers and provides a growth experience for faculty members and student interns who surround the IFS participants. It has served as a model for other IU freshman programs.
MAKING THE TRANSITION
Almost 12 years ago, IU administration officials began searching for a way to improve the freshman experience. A faculty advisory committee wanted to create a "smooth and seamless transition" that would help incoming students to "connect with the community socially and academically," says Travis Paulin, BA'93, director of summer freshman programs. The result? IFS was born.
IFS classes are not run like traditional IU courses. They meet every morning in three-hour blocks, and professors must devise different ways to keep students engaged for the entire time: films, group activities, computer work, and class discussions.
IUB geology professor Abhijit Basu, PhD'75, reviews planetary science with Amish Patel, who explored Mars with him in an intensive freshman seminar. Photo Tyagan Miller.
Deborah Gill Christiansen, BA'93, a professor of apparel merchandising who teaches Funk and Pharaohs: Communicating Culture Through Dress, has teamed up with education professor Jonathan Plucker's class, Creativity: Debunking Myths and Enhancing Innovation, to discuss how clothing expresses personality.
Other professors have moved the learning experience outside the classroom. Owen Johnson, a journalism professor who teaches A Century of News, has taken his class on field trips to Ernie Pyle's birthplace and the Indianapolis Recorder, an African-American newspaper.
In addition to daily coursework, IFS students participate in a variety of social activities: pool parties, coffeehouses, tie-dye parties, folk-dancing lessons, karate classes, movie nights, and opera and theater performances. The students must choose, entirely on their own, how they balance their social and academic lives.
Patel admits this sudden freedom left him a bit overwhelmed at first. In high school, he was a straight-A student who got by in class by completing the bare minimum amount of work. At IFS, he also worked the bare minimum, and he received a B- in his Exploring Mars course.
"It was a real wake-up call for me," he says. "I saw I would have to manage my time much better if I was going to take 17 hours per semester."
Paulin and Coyne say the program hopes to strike a balance between holding students' hands and giving them total social and academic freedom. They point out that all IFS students, from those in honors classes to those who struggled academically in high school, find that the program lives up to its name — intensive.
"There are no other circumstances short of combat that compel people to drop their defenses, share their anxieties, and truly bond with each other," says Coyne. "(IFS students) are all there with a common purpose. They're all facing this huge unknown together."
CHALLENGING COURSEWORK
Junior Brian Holman, a 1998 IFS student who took the Century of News class, remembers that he got used to "not sleeping very much" during IFS. After spending the morning in class, he ate lunch with his friends and napped in the afternoon before tackling a mound of homework: more than 100 pages of reading a night, on top of papers and group projects.
"IFS is one of the best social and worst academic experiences I've had so far in college," Holman says. "But that academic challenge is having many academic benefits for the rest of my college experience."
Holman believes his IFS class made him a more concise writer, a skill that has been crucial to his pursuit of a journalism career. He says he didn't realize the full impact of IFS until he was working at a local newspaper last summer and could see improvements in his work.
The real rewards from IFS, Plucker confirms, do not always happen within the three-week program.
"I still see some struggling sometimes," he says. "I get e-mails at the end of the first semester that say, 'Now I understand what Plucker was talking about.' Four years later, they'll really understand. That's awesome."
FACULTY GROWTH EXPERIENCE
Johnson, the professor who challenged Holman, says he learns alongside the incoming students. He listens to their concerns and contributions, applying the lessons he gains from IFS to all of his undergraduate courses.
Rudy Professor of Sociology Tom Gieryn taught Laura Hammer's seminar, The Sociology of Buildings. Photo Tyagan Miller.
"What strikes me about this whole experience," he says, "is seeing in the space of three weeks how rapidly students grow as individuals. They learn they need to take responsibility for how they lead their lives. This can be an intellectually exciting experience. What they learn can be very rewarding."
In order to teach IFS, faculty members must apply for positions and propose specific course goals and activities. Once selected, they attend a series of workshops in the spring semester before IFS to discuss questions and learn more about meeting incoming freshmen's needs.
Sharing in an atmosphere that's also challenging has kept Eric Richards, BA'74, JD'77, coming back to IFS for 10 years.
"This competitive side helps me," says Richards, an associate professor of business law who teaches Personal Law. "It gets the best of me. It fires me up to think about my class six months ahead of time."
Paulin says it's rare for professors to be able to talk with those from other departments about their teaching, so IFS workshops become an "amazing faculty growth experience." Faculty take the enthusiasm they glean from one another and apply it to their lives inside and outside the classroom. Some professors eat lunch daily with their students, lead special programs in the evenings, attend the pool party, or invite students to their homes.
Hanging out at her professor's house showed junior Laura Hammer, a 1998 IFS student, that "teachers here are people, too." The entire time she was at her professor's cookout, she kept thinking, "How many times at IU will I have the opportunity to be at my professor's house, to really know my classmates?" She knew IFS could be a once-in-a-college-lifetime experience for her.
IFS ALUMNI LEAD THE WAY
A few changes have occurred in the program over the years. In addition to general physical growth, from 150 students in 1990 to 300 students now, the program added student interns a few years ago. These interns, who are IFS alumni, form a liaison between the students and faculty members. They live with the students in the residence halls and sit in on classes, helping students with homework, projects, and study skills.
The residential assistants, program assistants, and class interns form another important part of the support network at IFS.
Senior Jeff Rusine has served as a residential assistant since he attended IFS in 1997. As someone who struggled to make friends at first, he says he appreciates the anxieties of new students. Rusine remembers one out-of-state student on his floor whose mother called every day before his arrival. She worried that her son was an introvert and wouldn't make friends. The first day, the student sat in the corner, but after some prompting from Rusine, he joined the rest of the floor in a game of basketball and made fast friends.
The student interns, on the other hand, encourage IFS students from a more academic standpoint. Junior Anne-Lise St-Phard, a 1998 IFS participant who worked for the program in 1999, spent her mornings in class with the students and her afternoons and evenings assisting with reading assignments, individual papers, and group projects.
"I learned a lot about getting students to know when they need to turn to me for help," she says. "They're college students now, and regardless of your intent, you can't baby them. You have to treat them like adults from Day One."
BARRIERS TO GROWTH
Recollecting the seminar titled A Century of News, Anne-Lise St-Phard and journalism professor Owen Johnson examine Ernie Pyle's typewriter in Ernie Pyle Hall. Photo Tyagan Miller.
While IFS improves the freshman experience for a handful of freshmen each year, Paulin says it can't reach everyone because of one major obstacle: the cost. For the year 2000, non-Indiana residents will pay $1,650, and residents will pay $834 for tuition, room, and board. Scholarship opportunities are limited, so some students can't afford the hefty tab to attend the program. Paulin believes this financial factor, combined with a desire to spend the last few weeks before college at home with friends and family, prevents the number of IFS students from reaching capacity at 400. Although he hopes a stronger advertising campaign will continue to attract more and more students, he knows testimonies from former students are the most effective way to spread the word.
"My sister is a senior in high school now, and I've already won her over," says senior Mark Bina, a 1996 IFS student who has worked as a program manager and computer consultant. "I can't really do justice to the program in words. It will give you a leg up on 98 percent of the other students in the freshman class."
IFS has caught the administration's eye, and officials used ideas from it when discussing the possibility of a standard freshman curriculum last year. Mike Wilkerson, BGS'77, IUB coordinator of academic affairs, says he sees a bright future for the program because it remains "one of its kind" in the university and the nation for its ability to acclimate incoming students.
"Larry Bird went to IU," he says, "and lasted a week. He was overwhelmed, so he left. I think if he had had IFS, he would have played for IU instead of Indiana State. It's amazing the things (IFS) is able to mean."
While some IFS students return home the week between the end of IFS and the start of regular classes, many move into their residence halls a week early and assist with freshman move-in day. The IFS graduates say they already feel like sophomores and can guide their new peers around campus.
Patel continues to think about the significance of IFS. He has spent his post-IFS days studying business and hopes to one day become an astronaut. He says that short time at IFS gave him the boost he needed.
"Every day it gets better," Patel says. "IFS was (three) weeks of fun I will remember for the rest of my life." 
Lisa Schubert, a junior majoring in journalism and French, attended IFS in 1998, taking journalism professor Owen Johnson's course A Century of News. For information about next year's IFS courses, call (800) 255-7943, e-mail ifs@indiana.edu, or visit the Web site, www.indiana.edu/~ifs.