SUNY Fredonia is one of 15 campuses in the SUNY system to receive matching funds to educate first-year students on the effects of alcohol.
“Adequately addressing the issue of alcohol awareness among college students is a challenge facing higher education systems across the country, and high-risk drinking is having an increasing affect on retention and graduation rates nationally,” said SUNY Chancellor John R. Ryan. “I am pleased to see so many of SUNY’s campuses spending their time, energy, and funding on this very important issue. Increasing alcohol awareness on our campuses will have a great impact on our students, our faculty and on members of local communities that surround SUNY campuses across the State.”
Fredonia will use the $10,500 in matching grant funds to require all incoming freshmen to complete an online, interactive course, AlcoholEdu.
To provide the computer course, AlcoholEdu, SUNY secured a contract with Outside the Classroom, Inc., based in Massachusetts. The course is an interactive program in which students are prompted to answer questions about their drinking habits and general background, so that the course is tailored to their own characteristics. AlcoholEdu, because it is interactive, is different for each student, engaging their interests more than other courses and leaving more of an impact on participating students.
Fredonia’s first-year students will be required to take the course before arriving in the Fall 2006 semester, and then will go through a follow-up course after they’ve been on campus several weeks.
Funding was donated by The Century Council, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to fighting underage drinking, and The Michael Andretti Foundation and Jim Beam Brands, Inc. The Century Council has donated approximately $215,000 to alcohol awareness and education efforts at SUNY since 2004.
