Your College Experience: Strategies for Success, Seventh Edition

John N. Gardner, University of South Carolina
A. Jerome Jewler, University of South Carolina, Columbia
Betsy O. Barefoot, University of South Carolina
 

Author Bio's

John N. Gardner brings unparalleled experience to this writing partnership for American higher education's authoritative text for first-year seminar courses. John is the recipient of his institution's highest award for teaching excellence. He has 25 years of experience directing and teaching in the most respected and widely emulated first-year seminar in the US, the University 101 course at the University of South Carolina. John is universally recognized as one of the country's leading higher educators for his role in initiating and orchestrating an international reform movement to improve the beginning college experience, a concept he coined as "the first-year experience". He is the founding executive director of two very influential higher education centers which support campuses in their efforts to improve the learning and retention of beginning college students: the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition at the University of South Carolina (www.sc.edu/fye), and the Policy Center on the First Year of College in Brevard, N.C. (www.fyfoundations.org). And the experiential basis for all of his work is his own miserable first year of college on academic probation, an experience he hopes to prevent for many of this book's readers.

A. Jerome Jewler is a best-selling author, educator, and friend to students. As a distinguished professor emeritus of the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies as well as co-director of the University 101 first-year seminar at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, he has guided advertising students through the creative and writing processes and has helped hundreds of new students determine their goals. He has planned and conducted training workshops for first-year seminar instructors, has won a Mortar Board award for teaching excellence, and was recognized as USC advisor of the year and nationally as the Distinguished Advertising Educator in 2000. While not working on this book—which isn't very often!—he guides younger children as a docent for the South Carolina State Museum.

Betsy Barefoot is a writer, researcher, and teacher whose special area of scholarship is the first-year seminar. During her tenure at the University of South Carolina from 1988 to 1999, she served as co-director for research and publications at the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition. She also taught University 101 in addition to special topics graduate courses on the "first-year experience" and the principles of college teaching. She conducts first-year seminar faculty training workshops around the US and in other countries and is frequently called on to evaluate seminar outcomes. Betsy currently serves as co-director and senior scholar in the Policy Center on the First Year of College, located in Brevard, NC. In this role she led a major national research project to identify "institutions of excellence" in the first college year. She currently works with both two- and four-year campuses in evaluating all components of the first year.
 

(Taken from www.thomsonedu.com )