January 27, 2010 — Get "Plugged In"

Dear Faculty, Staff & Students,

The university is preparing for some important guests who will be visiting our campus soon and needs you to be engaged in their visit.  Please take a few minutes to learn more about our visitors and their purpose.

The University of Louisiana at Lafayette is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools – Commission on Colleges (SACS-COC).  As you may know, accreditation is essential to our university because it is the “seal of approval” about the quality of education being received by our students.  This is likely one of the most important factors that prospective students, faculty, and donors consider when evaluating institutions.  Continued accreditation is also important to our current students and alumni as it has a direct impact on the value of their degrees.  This accreditation is required for our students to be eligible to participate in any federally supported financial aid programs (grants, loans, etc.).

As part of the reaffirmation of our  accreditation, UL Lafayette will be hosting an on-site review committee of representatives from peer institutions from February 23 to February 25.  There are two purposes for their visit next month. First, the committee members will ensure that the university is in compliance with accepted quality standards for institutions of higher learning.  And second, the committee will be reviewing and consulting with us on the UL Lafayette Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP). The QEP is a carefully designed plan of action to enhance student learning.  The focus of our QEP is the deployment of a university-wide First-Year Seminar for all incoming freshmen.

Development of the QEP is a major component of the SACS accreditation process, and it is something university faculty and staff members have been working on for the past couple of years. We began a broad-based process for identifying our QEP topic in 2007-2008.  In 2008-2009, a 17-member steering committee benchmarked best practices for the First-Year Seminars.  They established learning outcomes and recommended a 2 credit-hour course limited to 25 students per class. This semester, we are conducting a pilot study in 7 seminar sections. Over the next 4 years, there will be approximately 160 sections of the seminar offered across the campus.

The First-Year Seminar is rooted in offering meaningful active learning experiences.  The seminar focuses on stimulating incoming students’ intellectual curiosity and social responsibility, and providing them with knowledge and insights necessary for fulfillment and success in college.  Assisting trained faculty members are student mentors who help with connecting and engaging incoming freshmen. The First-Year Seminar promotes bonding with and a sense of belonging to our university. As such, our new First-Year Seminar is being called “The Cajun Connection.” It will connect students with the university, and in doing so, help them to progress and succeed.

To enable our campus community to understand more about the QEP and The Cajun Connection, our University’s Cinematic Arts Workshop has produced a series of brief videos we will proudly be airing. The first video, Plugged In, is exactly what we hope to achieve through The Cajun Connection.

I hope you enjoy the video.  You’ll be hearing more about the QEP and our visitors in the weeks to follow.

Sincerely,

E. Joseph Savoie
President
president@louisiana.edu