John N. Gardner brings unparalleled experience to this writing partnership for American higher education's authoritative text for first-year seminar courses. He 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 U.S., the University 101 course at the University of South Carolina. Gardner 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). 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. Jerome Jewler is a bestselling author, educator, and friend to students. 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 University of South Carolina, Columbia, Jewler has guided advertising students through the creative and writing processes, and has helped hundreds of new students determine their goals. As University 101 co-director, he 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. Betsy O. Barefoot is a writer, researcher, and teacher whose special area of scholarship is the first-year seminar. During her tenure at USC 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 and graduate courses on the first-year experience and the principles of college teaching. She conducts first-year seminar faculty training workshops around the world and is frequently called on to evaluate first-year seminar outcomes. Betsy is co-director and senior scholar in the Policy Center on the First Year of College in Brevard, North Carolina, where she led a major national research project to identify "institutions of excellence" in the first college year.