LOPR 101 – First-Year Seminar 3 credit hours
First-Year Seminar introduces skills necessary to enhance the academic success of students in college. Academic departments will teach topics relevant to their disciplines to practice the skills being learned during class. Skills include, but are not limited to, academic strategies to succeed in the classroom, campus involvement, career development, stress and time management, financial literacy, setting goals, and achieving personal wellness. This course will allow students to utilize campus resources and build community in order to foster personal growth, well-being, and a sense of place at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
LOPER 1 LEARNING OBJECTIVE - Students should be able to employ academic and career strategies. Performance indicators are:
- Apply at least two academic strategies tailored to course assignments or projects
- Identify and use two strategies to manage time and identify academic resources
- Identify relevant academic policies, processes, and procedures related to advising, course planning, and major exploration
- Engage in at least two collaborative activities with peers, staff, or faculty, or utilize campus resources and/or participate in campus activities
- Identify one area of growth in communicating across diverse perspectives
- Apply two well-being practices and document their impact on academic and personal success
Fields for faculty to complete are highlighted in yellow. You will notice that boilerplate policy/resource statements are provided in the template.
In a few places, you will see comments in italics inside braces. These are for your information and/or context. You may leave these in or delete them.
Basic section info (meeting days/times/modes/location) – These may not all be known at this time. The GEC will assume your section is in person if not indicated to be online. Indicate if you are planning on your section to be tailored to a student cohort or learning community such as Honors, TSLC, Kearney Bound, TRIO, KACAS, etc.
Instructor Information Table – Fill in the faculty instructor information. Co-curricular instructors will be assigned later this semester.
Course Topic Name – Your decision on this is important. Like with LOPR 126, if students wish to replace a LOPR 101 grade, they must retake a section with the same topic name. The GEC suggests that you consult with your department and see if you can create a topic name that is descriptive enough so that students know what they are getting into but broad enough for several faculty to be able to teach. This will hopefully enable the same topics to be offered more often and provide more flexibility for departments to assign faculty instructors.
Course Topic Description – The LOPR 101 course description and Topic Guidelines comments in the template allow for a great deal of flexibility for faculty to apply their interests and expertise.
Course Grading Scale – The point percentage scale in the template will be required for all sections.
Course Grade Weightings – There are seven categories. The first six match the university skills performance indicators that will be assessed, and the seventh category is a portion of the course grade you can allocate for topic content understanding apart from university skills. On first glance, it may appear that the seventh category does not adequately account for the faculty instructor workload, but keep in mind that university skills assignments will be integrated with topic material in ways that you will work out with your co-curricular staff partner. Assign grade weight percentages within the ranges given in the template.
Course Schedule Outline – Fill in the “Topic” column with anticipated discussion/lecture subject matter and major assignments, tests/quizzes, papers, presentations, etc. In the right-hand column, you see an order of university skills themes that Loper Success Hub leaders have developed. We expect that there will be some customization on a section-by-section basis – e.g., if your section topic is strongly linked to personal wellness, you are not going to wait until week 10 to discuss that, but perhaps there would be a skills assessment exercise at that time.
THERE WILL BE A PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOP IN APRIL FOR LOPR 101 FACULTY AND CO-CURRICULAR STAFF INSTRUCTORS to begin discussion of integrating topic and university skills material – stay tuned for announcements.
Can more than one faculty member team teach a LOPR 101 section?
Team teaching will be a consideration in the future, but for Fall 2025 section topic proposals, the GEC will only approve those with one faculty member.
What is the faculty workload credit for LOPR 101?
The first time a faculty member teaches LOPR 101, 3 workload hours per section will be credited with the expectation that the faculty member is also engaged with the university skills instruction. Between this experience and professional development workshops, it is anticipated that the faculty member will be able to teach both the topic content and university skills material in future offerings. This will be required in order to maintain 3 workload hours credit. If a co-curricular staff instructor is retained at that point, the faculty member will receive 2 workload hours credit.
What additional college and/or campus approval is needed for LOPR 101 topics?
The LOPR 101 course has already been approved by the Registrar and Senior Vice-Chancellor of Academic Affairs. Section topics do not need to be approved at the campus level. College approval will be needed but timelines and required information may differ – consult with your department Chair or Dean. The college and GEC approval processes are separate and can run concurrently.
How many sections of LOPR 101 are needed?
Our goal is 30 in-person sections plus enough online sections to meet demand.
What professional development workshops are being planned?
There will be a professional development workshop in April for LOPR 101 faculty and co-curricular staff instructors to begin discussion of integrating topic and university skills material – stay tuned for announcements. Another workshop in August to help instructors finalize their syllabus details is being considered.
