Perspective on the Freshman Year: Volume II. Selected Major Addresses from Freshman Year Experience Conferences. The Freshman Year Experience: Monograph Series Number 8.

This volume contains the text of six speeches selected from approximately 125 plenary talks that have been given over the past few years at more than 40 Freshman Year Experience Conferences by leading educators concerned about improving the first year undergraduate experience. In the first speech, "The Undergraduate Experience: Critical Issues for the 1990s," Ernest L. Boyer reflects on curriculum, teaching, sense of community, and assessment. In the second selection, "On Impostorship, Cultural Suicide, and Lost Innocence: How Freshman Adults Experience Critical Thinking" Stephen D. Brookfield focuses attention on the first year experience of non-traditional-aged adults entering college. Next, Sheila Tobias, in "Professors as First-Year College Students: What Can They Teach Us?", looks at students' academic self-image and how that may shape their choice of majors. For the fourth paper, "Along the Way" William C. Hartel, a professor of history at Marietta College, traces his evolution as a thinker, scholar, teacher, and activist on behalf of first year students. Stuart L. Smith in "Is Student Success Really a Serious Concern at Today's Universities?" reviews challenges to Canadian higher education. The final paper, "In Search of Hope and Heroes" by Laura I. Rendon, discusses responding to the challenges of increasingly diverse student bodies. Author biographies are included. Some papers offer references. (JB)