First-Year Experience

by Caroline Duda, Contributing WriterFor many Georgia College & State University students, the First-Year Academic Seminar is their initial foray into their intended major — and their first real impression of college life. One Bobcat is working to ensure that it’s a positive one. Dr. Kasey Karen, professor and biology program coordinator, first realized in 2019 that some students “felt kind of lost within a relatively big program on campus.” When the university embarked on a 2021 redesign...

New, this past spring, students in the GC2Y 2000 Global Perspectives Class learned from expansive assessments on climate change. The class, taught by Dr. Mark Causey, senior lecturer of philosophy and religious studies; Dr. Steven Elliott-Gower, associate professor of political science; and Dr. Hedy Fraunhofer, professor of French and German, combined their teaching using the liberal arts approach.Students learned about climate change from different disciplinary perspectives including...

Transitioning from high school to college can be tough. Everything about life changes—from where you live to who you live with, what you eat and how you spend your time.   To help make that transition a bit smoother, Georgia College created dedicated programming, courses and support through the Office of First-Year Experience.At the helm as director since its inception in 2019 is Dr. Erin Weston. She was recently recognized by the National Resource Center and Cengage as one of 10 Outstanding...

For Rachel Locke, Georgia College was always at the top of her list for colleges. Graduating from a larger high school in Alpharetta, she was interested in the smaller and more intimate class sizes that GC offers. She applied to Georgia College before any other school, but by the time she’d received a letter notifying her that she’d been recommended to the Bridge Scholars Program, a summer transitional program required as a contingent of acceptance, she’d already been accepted at other...