UW-Platteville’s Student Academic Success Peer Mentors and the Office of Information Technologies have collaborated to create programs called First Year Experience workshops, which are designed to ease the stress for freshmen students as well as give them an opportunity to ask questions they have about campus.

SAS held four workshops covering the following areas: talking to your professors, tips on the path to success, campus technology and taking good notes.

The programs were originally started so that a member of OIT did not have to attend all of the introduction to college life classes, but it is open to all freshmen who have any questions or concerns.

The Introduction to College Life courses are eight weeks long and teach pretty much the same information that is being taught in these workshops. The difference is that in the class the professor is able to go into more detail. The workshops are primarily based on the information SAS has been told would be beneficial to new freshmen students. The First Year Experience workshops are a broad overview of what OIT thinks is the best and most helpful information for the new freshmen to do well in college.

Courtney Weigel, a junior peer mentors, gave the Campus Technical Communication Workshop Sept. 22, in Ottensman Hall. Weigel said the workshop only had five attendees, but they all asked questions and participated, increasing their knowledge of the campus community and the online resources.

“I wish there was a program like this when I was a freshman,” Weigel said.

SAS hopes that participation will grow quickly in the future.

According to the UW-Platteville Web site, the First Year Experience program has been making strides for years in helping new students at UW-P. The workshops presented were SAS’ next step in easing the transition from high school to college. The First Year Experience started with a presentation on Introduction to College courses and has evolved to the interaction between students of different ages to help the newer students feel more confident in their new home. SAS plans to have more workshops like these in the future and hopes to have more interested parties come because it is so helpful to the new students.