Anne DePrince is the associate vice provost for public good strategy and research at the University of Denver.
U.S. News: What are the University of Denver’s Learning Cohorts, and how do they support first-year students?
DePrince: D.U.’s Learning Cohorts bring together first-year students with a team of staff, faculty, grad student and community mentors who all share a passion, such as care for the environment or the future of health.
- Together, students discover how their unique interests, skills and talents prepare them to turn passions into action – at D.U. and beyond.
- Open to all first-year students, Learning Cohorts are perfect for connecting with peers and mentors, and digging into the issues that students care about.
- Designed to fit flexibly into class schedules, students explore different topics through sprint classes (offered in a concentrated amount of time outside of the usual class schedule), conversations with community leaders, field trips and more.
Roddy MacInnes
U.S. News: What quantitative and/or qualitative results have you seen from the program for students and the institution itself?
DePrince: Across the evolution of these cohorted programs, our focus has been on supporting students to build integrative learning skills that will serve them across their D.U. education.
- For instance, we design activities that help students draw connections between their lives and their academic knowledge.
- Each student develops an action plan for pursuing their interests after the Cohort.
Our program evaluation shows significant increases in student integrative learning skills as well as evidence that students engage with Cohort mentors to build their academic success.
- Through the action plans, we find that students show agency as they identify specific, actionable steps to pursue their interests and passions in subsequent years of their education.
- Perhaps not surprisingly, given that students are developing specific plans for how they want to use their future time at D.U., we find excellent persistence from the first to second year.
- Students also tell us about the incredible relationships they have built through the Cohorts, with friends and mentors.
U.S. News: What lessons have you learned from this approach to mentorship and learning that would benefit other institutions?
DePrince: Many prospective students want to do research and other signature work – that is, original projects connected to their passion and academic learning with individualized mentorship. They need curiosity, relationships, skills and resources for them, and over time, we’ve learned to leverage the Learning Cohorts to impart these prerequisites.
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- We organize the Learning Cohorts around helping students identify a complex issue or problem of importance to them. In turn, we help students map their interests in subsequent curricular and co-curricular opportunities through an action plan.
- Through this process, we help students develop core professional skills to prepare them for signature work.
- To prepare students for community-engaged signature work, we expanded the mentor team to include community leaders. Cohort activities also involve conversations with community leaders to explore different ways that people turn passion into action.
- Our Graduate Mentor Fellows Program helps graduate students build their skills as mentors and then work with undergraduates in the Cohorts.
- Historically, we recruited students into Living and Learning Communities before they matriculated. Today, we recruit in fall quarter, finding it more conducive to connect with students as they are beginning to explore their interests on campus.
- We continue to evolve the structure of the program to fit into students’ schedules.
