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Our self-study yielded the following outcomes:

• A comprehensive overview of the diverse ways through which students experience their first year at St. Olaf.  None is more or less valid than the others; each in its own way offers students ownership in choosing the experience most fitted to their interests and strengths.
• Deeper understanding of the extent to which students experience the general education curriculum as a vital and integral part of their first year of college.  Focus group responses suggest that students who view courses that fulfill general education requirements, particularly GE 111 and Religion 121, as discreet from one another and from all of their courses may perpetuate high school attitudes and behaviors of learning as "doing" rather than an ongoing process of thinking and learning.  Students benefit from faculty's explicit connections among courses.  A question remains: If students do not engage in general education courses during their first year, to what extent will they realize the purpose of and fully engage in a liberal arts education?  
  
• Preliminary dissemination of results through faculty development forums sponsored by the St. Olaf Center for Innovation in the Liberal Arts.  Specifically, CoFYE presented commonalities (e.g., residential with roommate, 18 - 19 years old, governed by current College catalog) and the range of difference (e.g., home commitments, level of coursework, work for pay as necessity) among first-year students.  Differences outweigh commonalities, supporting a model that offers more than one kind of first-year experience.  
• Redevelopment of faculty orientation for teaching First-Year Seminar.  This workshop now includes intentional discussion of the relationship between first-year student engagement, writing, and college success.  
  
• Recommendations for revising the College Admissions web site and for developing an interactive web training guide for new advisors.  
  
• Contributions to a first-year student binder presenting information previously mailed to students from separate offices on different dates.  The First-Year Dean's office mailed this binder to incoming students during summer 2005.  CoFYE's emphasis on a coherent first-year experience supported already existing efforts to develop this binder.
  
• Preliminary development of ongoing orientation activities.  Our self-study revealed that during their second semester, first-year students are more confident academically and socially than during the first semester.  However, while they may recognize that high school study skills and behaviors are no longer adequate, they may not yet have developed a college support network that will best serve them.  In response, CoFYE is working on a model to distribute Week One activities throughout the semester and into a series of Interim seminars.  The first Interim Orientation will take place during January 2006.