FOCUS may expand to spring

Administration officials are exploring an expansion of FOCUS to include a single program in the spring semester for the upcoming year. FOCUS Director Angela O'Rand said the specific program had not yet been chosen but that a decision would be made within the next two months.

O'Rand said the popularity of FOCUS among all involved--students, faculty members and administrators--led to the desire to make it available to more students. Although O'Rand said she was excited about a wider FOCUS program, she noted that the incremental and experimental nature of the expansion is necessary.

"We are being encouraged by the administration to carefully experiment," she said. "We have to move carefully because FOCUS is a great success as it is [currently]. If [the spring program] flops, then we will see that second semester freshman students don't need or want a FOCUS program."

This minor expansion is part of the administration's greater plan to make FOCUS available to more freshman; in recent years an increasing number of students have been turned away due to the popularity of the program.

FOCUS is not only growing in popularity among incoming students; top administrators are also singing its praises. Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences William Chafe sees the program as a major drawing card for the University.

"FOCUS is probably one of our strongest magnets to attract students because it makes us different from other research universities and colleges," he said. "It's the only program really in the country that offers as many opportunities to the freshman class to study together an issue or theme from multiple interdisciplinary perspectives. No one at other universities or colleges has anything as broad or deep as this is."

Along with attracting prospective students, a study conducted this past summer by Dean of Trinity College Robert Thompson found that FOCUS might better prepare students for academic success throughout college. Thompson's findings--which are based on the current class of 2004--highlight statistically higher GPAs for FOCUS students in both the short and long-term.

"At the end of the first term, there is a statistically significant difference in GPA between FOCUS and the matched control group--not more than a few tenths of a point, but a difference," Thompson said. "In general that difference persists [after freshman year]."

Although Thompson noted that, on the whole, incoming FOCUS students have both slightly higher test scores and admissions scores than the average freshman, he said the study matched FOCUS students with an equivalent control group.

Thompson also pointed to the statistics on study abroad as separating FOCUS students from the control group. He said 46 percent of FOCUS students went abroad during their junior year, compared to 37 percent of students from the control group.

As part of their strong support for FOCUS, administrators are considering implementing similar inter-disciplinary programs for students after freshman year. Thompson said he saw great potential in having seminars across disciplines that, like FOCUS programs, are centered on common themes. Unlike FOCUS, however, the programs could take place over multiple semesters.

Thompson said certificate programs offered in some departments are broader examples of the upper-classman program he has in mind. He added, however, that those programs often require six courses; he sees the inter-disciplinary seminars as being smaller in scope.