Dec. 11, 2024
Story by Jade Elwess and Kaleigh Ibarra
Photos by Kendall Roberts
Since the program’s inception 30 years ago this fall, the University of Missouri’s Freshman Interest Groups (FIGs) have helped first-year students find their footing, build community and succeed academically.
FIGs are small groups of first-year students who share similar academic interests and take a set of classes together, including a weekly seminar co-led by a faculty or staff member and a fellow student who serves as a peer learning advisor.
The program has touched the lives of more than 20,000 Tigers over the past three decades. This semester, FIGs nearly doubled their enrollment to just under 1,000 students, adding 14 new groups and expanding existing ones. Plans are underway to add as many as 20 new groups in fall 2025.
Jerry Frank, associate professor of history and academic director of FIGs, said that this high-impact practice has a demonstrable effect on student outcomes.
“Due to the hard work and dedication of our faculty and staff mentors and student leaders, Mizzou has increased retention rates among FIG participants from 88% to 93% over the past five years, and we are well on our way to achieving our goal of 97% retention,” Frank said.
In honor of the program’s 30-year mark, meet four former FIG students and peer learning advisors who are now teaching and leading their own FIGs at Mizzou.
Andrew Zumwalt
Andrew Zumwalt was a peer advisor in 2003 for Pathways, a FIG for incoming students to explore different majors and career paths. In that role, he met a fellow peer advisor and his future wife, Valerie, whom he calls his “Mizzou match.”
Looking back on his experience as a peer learning advisor, Zumwalt is struck by the significance of that mentorship role.
“You forget the impact you have on people’s lives,” Zumwalt said.
He is now an associate teaching professor and personal financial planning program chair in Mizzou’s College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources (CAFNR). Next fall, he will continue impacting students by leading his own Wealth Management FIG, which he developed as part of the High Impact Practices Summer Institute.
Amanda Alexander
Amanda Alexander moved from Okinawa, Japan, to attend Mizzou in 2003. She was a first-year student living in the U.S. for the first time.
“My parents took me to college, and then they went back over to Okinawa, so [my FIG] was key for building friendships and getting to talk with other people that very first year,” Alexander said.
For Alexander, the Pathways FIG was like a second family. With her FIG cohort, she celebrated Thanksgiving, was invited to family weekend celebrations and went to Mizzou games.
This year, looking through the scrapbook she kept as a student, Alexander found a note from her FIG peer advisor, who was Andrew Zumwalt.
“You are a strong and determined woman who I expect to create great things wherever she goes,” Zumwalt wrote. “You have developed and adapted to a home away from home with grace.”
Alexander is now an associate teaching professor and program chair in hospitality management at CAFNR. This semester she is teaching a Community Engaged Learning course that gives hospitality management students the opportunity to partner with local business owners.
Ashlie Lester
Ashlie Lester joined the Honors Humanities FIG as a student in 1998. She is now an associate teaching professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Science in the College of Education and Human Development.
She recalled the booming excitement amongst her group of peers the first night they all moved in. Almost immediately, she’d felt like she had found her people before classes had even started. They got to know each other well, bonding over soccer games they played late at night, homesickness and the anticipation of how the year would go. They were there for each other through the ups and downs.
“All of a sudden, this huge, overwhelming behemoth of an institution can feel very small and cozy and intimate and personalized,” Lester said. “And I really felt like I belonged.”
Even now, Lester and her former classmates arrange a reunion each year and recently returned from a trip to Puerto Rico.
After her FIG experience as a student, she became a peer advisor her junior year, and now, as faculty, Lester is offering the Love, Family and Relationships FIG, a course she developed with help from the High-Impact Practices Summer Institute, in fall 2025.
Melissa Herzog
Melissa Herzog, a first-generation college student, was a member of the Communications FIG in Hatch Hall in 1997, and is now an associate teaching professor in Mizzou’s Department of Human Development and Family Science.
Columbia was the largest city Herzog had ever lived in. She said that getting to know people before the start of classes helped her adjust to life at Mizzou. She and her peers would talk about assignments and give each other feedback.
FIGs are an opportunity for students to explore their interests while connecting with others. Herzog said she would have been lost without the relationships she formed as a freshman and that her FIG was a great way to build community very quickly.
“I feel like it sets the students up in a really positive trajectory because going to college for the first time can be a really scary thing,” Herzog said. “And you don't know what you don't know, but if you have people who are going through it, you feel a little less alone, and that makes it easier to cope.”
Herzog, whose office is next door to Lester’s, will teach Intimate Relationships and Marriage — which is one of the classes required for the Love, Family and Relationships FIG — in fall 2025.
Focusing on the future
FIG participants can choose their roommates and residence halls, and they form connections with their FIG cohort through a weekly seminar and co-enrollment in three courses selected by their FIG leader. In this way, students have a built-in study group for their first semester of college.
Part of FIGs’ growth is due to Mizzou’s overall increase in enrollment. More importantly, it reflects the program’s commitment to accessibility by removing barriers for first-generation and Pell-eligible students. In addition, students now indicate their interest in a FIG during the Mizzou admissions process.
“To accommodate nearly doubled demand in a single year, we added several sections in existing FIGs and launched new FIGs in exciting areas including communication and social justice,” Frank said. “We are also preparing to offer new FIGs in psychology, debate, wealth management, architectural studies, family science and chemistry for fall 2025.”
Frank pointed out that the rapid growth of the program will not come at the expense of the student experience.
“We held firm on keeping an enrollment cap of 20 on all FIGs and, thanks to the leadership of Jim Spain, vice provost for undergraduate studies, we have more resources than ever for providing rich and engaging educational experiences for our FIG students,” Frank said.
