Ellie Perrier

Although the availability of many classes may fluctuate each year, the arrival of General Education 1111 this fall is the culmination of meticulous planning and preparation by Trinity’s administration.
Jamie Thompson, interim associate vice president for student affairs and dean of students, and Jennifer Henderson, associate vice president for academic affairs, spearheaded an initiative to create what is now known as the Life Lab. Based off of initial research of other universities, the two set out to create an all-encompassing curriculum that could benefit students specifically in their first semester on campus.
“[Dr. Henderson and I] spent the summer of ‘22, meeting with somewhere around 15 different institutions across the U.S.,” Thompson said. “From there, we proposed the concept to some colleagues and began to socialize the idea of this one-credit experience. That’s what we now call the first-year Life Lab; it’s Gen Ed 1111. And the purpose of the course is to … provide students resources and information to help in their transition to college, and to do so in a just-in-time approach.”
With an emphasis on small class sizes, GNED 1111 utilized a pilot year in fall of 2023. The course is broken down into nine different modules aimed at tackling topics such as time management and relationship-building. Each module was constructed by experts in the specific field, and then diffused to each section through peer tutors and faculty teaching. Andrew Phillips, junior earth systems and theatre double-major, served as a peer tutor for 13 students this past fall.
“The peer tutor’s role in this course is to be the student that has gone through everything,” Phillips said. “The faculty and staff who teach this course are very knowledgeable about the resources available on campus, but they haven’t used the resources because they’re staff. It’s really speaking up when you have used the academic support center and talking about your feelings and how that benefits you as a student and encouraging others to get through that.”
The class, taught by Trinity faculty with master’s degrees, is meant to be relaxing and informative. Advertised strongly at events like Tiger Takeoff, promotion of the course highlighted the nine-module structure as well as the ease it may provide students transitioning into the college lifestyle. To top things off, each section ended the semester with a social bonding activity such as bowling or grabbing boba as a class. Andrew Hansen, chair of the human communication and theatre departments, took his students to Bombay Bicycle Club.
“It’s kind of nice, and they could see me outside the classroom too,” Hansen said. “I thought it was a nice extension because it was trying to put into action conversational skills, interactional skills that were implicit in a lot of our lessons, you know, understanding and appreciating and accepting being interested in each other. Not seeing college and professors as something scary, but something that they can easily walk into, which is a little bit of an adjustment from that issue from high school.”
As 149 students voluntarily enrolled in the course pilot across 12 sections, initial feedback was extremely positive. Despite the newness of the course for students, peer tutors and faculty members, the data from students after the course showed higher amounts of student retention, GPA and overall sense of belonging at Trinity.
Looking forward, the class aims to continue developing. From the data collection of only one year, Henderson and Thompson continue to have high expectations for the class. The two have already discussed the idea for a more advanced version of the course to be developed for upperclassmen, focusing on topics such as taxes and property information.
“I think that we will always be evolving in this class,” Henderson said. “As I said before, I think there are always new and important topics we need to be talking about. Next year, we’ve got an election coming up. And so learning how to have tough conversations and listen to one another will be essential, right? So that may be a unit that we’re focused on more next fall than in some other polls, for example. I think it’ll always be evolving.”