Archives West Finding Aid

The UO Documenting Freshman Year Experience Project is a part of the College Connections course for "Living Autobiography" in 2007, "Hidden History" in 2008, and "Reboot the Past, Upload the Future" in 2009. The 1-credit College Connections Seminar links two regular general-education courses - history and folklore - thematically and methodologically for the co-enrolled FIG students. There are an average of 20 students in each FIG, all incoming freshmen living in the same residence hall. Prior to their arrival at the University of Oregon, they read a portion of the diary of Lucille Saunders MacDonald who was a Freshman at the university in 1915. Working with Special Collections and University Archives, the students look at documents, ephemera, and memorabilia from the university in the early 1910s in order to more fully understand the era of the diary. The students then created their own project entries in weekly assignments adding photographs to illustrate their own freshman experiences. Beginning in 2009, students participated in a class wiki and had the opportunity to create digital content to document the term.

The individual projects are arranged first by academic year, then alphabetically by the student's last name. The first group of journals are those currently open. The second group of journals are those that will be opened in the future with the corresponding date. Digital projects are available online in the UO Libraries' Scholars' Bank institutional repository. These are arranged first by academic year, followed by their opening date, and then alphabetically by the student's last name.