First-Year Cohorts

UWT is delighted to offer first-year students a core curriculum that emerges from best practices across the country and research on what helps students succeed. According to this research and these practices, a "cohort" model results in higher academic achievement, a lower attrition rate, and greater student satisfaction than other models.

In a cohort model, undergraduates take courses with the same students throughout their core courses. Doing so helps students, faculty, staff, and librarians create a learning community. Teaching and learning in community (rather than with different students in every class) means that students make friends faster and work together as colleagues.

Best practices and research also tell us that interdisciplinary core courses help first-year students succeed. That's why the core courses include more than one field of study. Today's challenges, after all, are complex and require educated citizens to approach them from more than one perspective.

UWT wants students to achieve high grades, stay in school, and enjoy their learning: that's why first-year students will participate in a core "cohort model" curriculum. We are using three formats of this model, into which students are placed according to available seats first.

1. One core cohort model features a 44-student course taught by 2 faculty members, a librarian, and a Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) consultant. This core has 10 credits in the fall, 10 in the winter, and 5 in the spring.
2. The other core cohort model features a 22-student course taught by 2 faculty members, a librarian, and a TLC consultant, in the fall (10 credits). In the winter and spring, the core is taught by one faculty member, one librarian, and one TLC consultant (5 credits each term).
3. A 22-student autumn-quarter first-year seminar features one faculty member, a librarian, and a TLC consultant. Students take a 5-credit course during autumn quarter and return to a menu option subsequent quarters. PLEASE NOTE: This course is for first-year students with 25 or more college-level credits, including composition.

Students may schedule self-select electives each quarter. First-Year Seminar students take a 5 credit autumn quarter only, and self-select electives autumn and subsequent quarters. Undergraduate students registered for 12 or more credits are considered full-time students.

We are excited about our different cohort models, based, as they are, on successful first-year experience and research around the country.

top