Your time at Goucher will help shape you as a person, a scholar, and a community member, and the following goals are essential to a successful first-year experience.

Seek Challenge

• Pursue your passions and explore your questions through your coursework and co-curricular endeavors 
• Understand and accept the expectations placed on you, and you will strive for excellence
• Develop leadership skills and personal ethics
• Address new ideas 
• Develop and sharpen your repertoire of skills to embrace challenges successfully

Improve Academic Skills

• Make measurable efforts to advance your writing, reading, critical thinking, verbal communication, research, and study skills
• Begin to understand the importance of cross-disciplinary learning
• Become familiar with varied resources on campus 
• Reach out for assistance if you experience academic difficulty

Develop a Plan

• Develop an understanding and appreciation of the liberal arts tradition and the core curriculum at Goucher College
• Begin to develop a working plan for your educational path, including a study-abroad plan that is an integral part of your overall academic vision

Engage in the Community

• Identify with and become involved in the Goucher community in academic, co-curricular, and social arenas
• Develop the self-awareness and confidence needed to proactively engage with others in and out of the classroom
• Participate in co-curricular activities, organizations, or initiatives and cultivate at least one mentoring relationship with a staff or faculty member
• Embrace Goucher's Community Principles of respect, inclusion, communication, service and social justice, and responsibility
• Develop an awareness of your own identity and place within a diverse community

Venture Out

• Spend time beyond the Goucher campus, exploring the many opportunities for social and cultural interaction that exist in Baltimore and Washington, DC
• Familiarize yourself with the numerous community-based learning (off-campus service) opportunities coordinated by Goucher