First things first: Developing academic competence in the first year of college. Research in Higher Education

Perhaps two-thirds of the gains students make in knowledge and cognitive skill development occur in the first 2 years of college (Pascarella, E. T., and Terenzini, P. T. (2005). How college affects students Vol. 2. A third decade of research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass). A significant proportion of the students entering America’s colleges and universities, however, never make it to their second year at the institution where they began. This study, part of a national effort to transform how colleges and universities think about, package, and present their first year of college, is based on data from nearly 6,700 students and 5,000 faculty members on 30 campuses nationwide. The study identifies the individual, organizational, environmental, programmatic, and policy factors that individually and collectively shape students ’ development of academic competence in their first year of college. KEY WORDS: college students; first-year students; first-year experience; academic competence; foundations of excellence; college outcomes. A student’s first year of college is vitally important for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the significant gain in learning an