About Aggie Life
Beginning in the fall of 2016, Aggie Life began as a strategic, first-year-experience initiative designed to more deeply connect first-year students with the TAMUQ campus. The small size and engineering focus of TAMUQ enables it to be at the forefront of engineering education. Leading universities across the U.S. have long emphasized the importance of a freshman year experience as a proven effort to increase retention and student success. Texas A&M at Qatar already has outstanding retention and graduation rates as measured against other engineering colleges across the U.S., so the primary emphasis is on improving the freshman experience in order to ultimately yield better graduates with a greater diversity of skills.
Aggie Life provides an introduction and integration into Texas A&M University and the engineering world. It will emphasize collaborative learning, communication skills (written, oral, and visual), critical thinking, and the Aggie core values. The Aggie Life goals are accomplished through the following activities:
- Aggie Life 101 (New Student Orientation)
- Integrative Classroom/Academic Experiences
- Faculty/Student Mentorship in Academic Programs
- Extracurricular Learning Experiences
- Assessment of the First-Year Experience