June 6-8, 2007
St. Lawrence University
Canton, NY 13617

Registration materials and
"Conference at a Glance" are available here (PDF).

Updated final program is here (Word doc).

We invite your participation in a small conference on first-year programs, designed specifically to enable those of us at selective liberal arts colleges to share our experience and best practices. If your experience is like ours, we invest a great deal of creative energy and resources in our first-year program, and yet we routinely find that the way these programs are treated at larger national conferences fails to connect with the nature of our work, and thus fails to be helpful in moving it forward.

We are hosting this invitational conference on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of St. Lawrence’s First-Year Program. We hope that you will join us on June 6-8, 2007, here on our campus. Titled “First-Year Programs and Liberal Arts: Best Practices and New Thinking,” the conference will bring together academic and student life leaders from liberal arts colleges in the Northeast and beyond who are engaged in the work of first-year programs on their campuses. The conference would begin with an opening celebratory dinner and plenary event on the evening of the 6th, continue with break-out sessions all day on the 7th and conclude with roundtable discussions and a wrap-up plenary on the morning of the 8th. We will be providing all meals and there will be no registration fee. Presenters and attendees need only cover travel and hotel costs.

Organizing Committee:

Steven Horwitz, Associate Dean of the First Year, St. Lawrence University
Michael Arnush, Director, First Year Experience, Skidmore College
Lisa Gates, Dean of the Class of 2007, Wesleyan University
Cathy Crosby-Currie, Associate Professor of Psychology, SLU
Kate McCaffrey, Director, Co-Curricular Education and Programming, SLU
Hillory Oakes, Director, Munn Center for Rhetoric and Communication, SLU
Matha Thornton, Assistant Dean and Director of Residence Life, SLU