IU freshmen feel challenged

While freshmen at IU continue to report a high level of academic challenge, seniors are telling a different story, according to the National Survey of Student Engagement.\nCompared to national norms, freshmen are challenged at a rate better than 95 percent of similar-sized colleges surveyed. Seniors reported being challenged at a level 56 percent better than the national average.\nThe results of the 2002 survey were released to the public at Tuesday's Bloomington Faculty Council meeting.\n"I worry a little about the level of academic challenge in the senior year and wonder if we might be able to do a little more," said George Kuh, the chancellor's professor of higher education and director of the NSSE.\nFreshmen also reported levels in active and collaborative learning, student-faculty interaction and supportive campus environment that were better than 80 percent of the nation. For seniors, those levels were all below 70 percent. \nThe NSSE is a student survey that annually evaluates the college experience for freshmen and seniors at over 600 schools. It was created to be an alternative to the mainstream college rankings of U.S. News and World Report and Time magazine.\nIU Student Association vice president Judd Arnold said the data may be misleading. Upper level classes aren't necessarily less challenging. It's just that many seniors eschew 300 and 400 level classes to take general education classes, he said. \nBloomington Faculty Council President Bob Eno agreed that the data needs a closer examination.\n"Possibly it is the structure of our curriculum that allows students to front load and take lower level classes their senior year," Eno said. "Or it may be the result that they aren't challenged as they should be."\nEno said the freshmen responses validate IU's commitment to the first year. \n"We've put a lot of effort into the first year," he said. "When we focus on an issue, we produce excellent results."\nTime magazine named IU College of the Year in 2001 for its freshmen orientation programs. \n"Overall the first year is quite strong on campus," Kuh said. "The campus has for the last five or six years focused on it. \nKuh said he is not sure when students begin to be less challenged. The NSSE survey only polls freshmen and seniors.\n"The challenging and supportive environment tends to soften up a bit," he said. "We can't tell when that is exactly because the measurements come at only two points. Maybe it starts in the junior year. We don't know."\nKuh said surveying all four classes in the future may help IU understand the scope of the problem. He said IU may decide to examine the data on a school to school basis. \n"If you break it down among schools, then there will be more responsibility and ownership," Kuh said.