Gordon State College

FIRE 1000 ("Freshmen Introduction to Reasoning Essentials") is a first-year course that stimulates students' academic self-efficacy, depth of intellectual inquiry, and problem-solving skills. This is done through research and reflection to understand themselves better, their purpose, and the campus community. FIRE 1000 was launched in 2017 and is required at GSC for all new and transfer students under 13 credit hours.

The Faculty Mentor Program at Gordon State College pairs first-year students (students under 30 credit hours) with faculty in the student's major area/area of focus. Faculty mentors act as part of the student's success team. They provide professional and career guidance and encouragement and help connect students with campus resources. All tenure-track faculty members serve as faculty members. Faculty mentors act to provide services and support that complement the services offered by GSC's professional academic advisors.

Always Alert is Gordon State College's early alert academic intervention program. The program is intended to help students at-risk of not succeeding in one or more classes. The program relies on volunteer faculty academic coaches to conduct one-on-one meetings. The program uses Navigate to facilitate outreach, appointment-making, and record-keeping.

Gordon State College completed its last advising redesign three years ago. Before the redesign, we had five advisor/faculty members who taught our first-year experience course and served as advisors for students enrolled in those courses. These advisor/faculty members held a hybrid role at Gordon. With our redesign in 2020-2021, we adopted professional advising for first-year students. Under our current system, advisors do not teach. They advise their advisees full time, and the first-year experience course is taught by teaching faculty.

Advising Redesign which includes Faculty Mentoring. All Freshmen at GSC are assigned a professional advisor and faculty mentor. Advisors and faculty mentors work together to deploy touchpoints for each student.

Retention and graduation rates have increased nationally due to the implementation and design of well-crafted program maps with an emphasis on students taking fuller schedules categorized by the 15-to-finish initiative. Gordon State College made early efforts to create program maps with co-curricular milestones using the theme of Gordon’s Highlander EDGE. After careful review we noticed that some of the program maps had not been pressure tested and we have now determined a plan to carefully review, and pressure test our program maps annually.

New Student Orientation (NSO) is designed to help students settle into campus life and fully prepare for the start of their classes and college journey. Students will learn more about campus resources, bond with classmates at social events, and familiarize themselves with campus before classes begin. As part of the Student Success Redesign at Gordon State College, via the USG Study Group, we determined that we needed to revamp our pre-orientation platform to allow for NSO registration and the deployment of a scheduling survey for students.

FIRE 1000 (Freshmen Introduction to Reasoning Essentials) is a first-year course intended to stimulate students’ academic self-efficacy, depth of intellectual inquiry, and problem-solving skills. This is done through research and reflection to achieve a deeper understanding of themselves, their purpose, and the campus community. FIRE 1000 was launched in 2017 and is required at GSC for all new students and transfer students under 13 credit hours.