Benefits of Freshman Academy

Freshman Academy focuses on helping students make important connections through the unique experience of learning communities. These communities consist of small groups of students. Freshman Academy strives to provide the best possible teaching and learning environment for entering students through the learning community experience.

Freshman Academy helps connect YOU to:

Other Students:

Connecting with your fellow freshman students at BYU is an important component of the program and can lead to life-long friendships. Learning communities encourage you to study with students who are not only enrolled in your classes, but are often considering the same major. Also, for those living on campus, Freshman Academy works closely with Residence Life to provide a "living-learning" experience where students may extend classroom friendships to their residence halls and wards.

Faculty:

Freshman Academy helps you connect with faculty both in and out of the classroom, through smaller classes, and organized events and activities. These interactions help you build meaningful relationships with faculty, offer opportunities for conversation with leading teachers and authorities in several disciplines, and provide insight into the life of the mind.

Peer Mentors:

Freshman Academy connects you to outside resources and individual mentoring by providing peer mentors. These upperclassmen, a year or two ahead of you in school, have already taken many of the classes you will be taking, often from the same professor. They know a great deal about university resources and since they are successful students, they will answer your questions, set an example, direct you to university resources, and assist you as you become integrated into the university community. Peer mentors attend at least one Freshman Academy class with their students each week and may organize learning community activities, service projects, and study sessions. They meet frequently with students, and facilitate student-faculty interaction. As a resource especially for YOU, they can positively impact your integration here at BYU.

BYU:

Freshman Academy helps you ease into the university experience by exposing you to various aspects of community life with the aid of a peer mentor and supportive faculty members. With their help you can connect with campus resources such as course study labs, advisement centers, and other tutoring services. Further opportunities to connect are available through service and attendance at campus events with members of your learning community. These activities, and many others, are a part of the Freshman Academy experience, and have proven to be effective measures in helping new students transition to a large campus community.

The Aims of a BYU Education:

Because your intentions, motivations, and goals as a student at BYU largely determine how much effort you will put into your school work, it is important for you to understand and feel connected to the Aims of a BYU Education. This document is a statement of the university's motivations, intentions, and goals in relation to the students who enroll here. As students' intentions align with those of the university, the BYU experience will be spiritually strengthening, intellectually enlarging, and character building, leading to lifelong learning and service. Freshman Academy can help you as a student to integrate material from your academy courses, and assists in your holistic development. It also provides service opportunities, and encourages you academically to seek deep learning throughout your experience here. As you develop your own healthy habits of learning, on the path to becoming a disciple scholar, you will better come to appreciate the purpose behind the Aims, and how they can improve your experience, your education, and the rest of your life.