by Ben Gebre-Medhin and Abigail Glogower
Every year, first year students arrive on campus seeking connections with their new college communities. This case study outlines an innovative collaboration between a college archivist and a faculty member in sociology to leverage the first year seminar as a site for exploring the history of admissions and belonging on campus. Through a series of assignments spread across a semester, students studied primary sources documenting their own school’s deliberation, policy, and publicity around admissions; by contextualizing and evaluating archival documents students consider how the ideal college student has been socially constructed and how this ideal has changed over time. Together, we offer a model demonstrating that engagement with archival holdings on college admissions can introduce foundational concepts in social science while fostering belonging and ultimately supporting the retention and success of first-year students.