ROAR 1101 Launches Scholarship Essay Writing Focus

Starting college is about more than just earning good grades. It’s about personal growth, building life skills, and preparing for the future. At Idaho State University, ROAR 1101 helps first-year students succeed by offering guidance on academics, friendships, financial health, and overall well-being.

“The course is designed to increase the likelihood that students will stay in college, succeed, and graduate,” says Jim DiSanza, chair of the Department of Communication, Media, and Persuasion and course coordinator for ROAR.

This fall, in an effort to serve students better, the course is expanding its financial literacy component to include a unit on helping students navigate the ISU scholarship system and teaching students how to write strong, personal essays that stand out. “This new part of the class helps students feel more confident about paying for school and reaching their goals,” DiSanza explains.

DiSanza has overseen ROAR 1101 for years and saw a need to make the course more specific to ISU students. He reached out to Deb Green, director of scholarships at ISU, to develop a new module focused on the scholarship process.

As a member of scholarship selection boards, DiSanza had viewed over 1,000 applications and personal essays.

“I felt many students had a unique story to tell but didn’t do it,” he says. “Money was being left on the table and students needed help doing this. In response I decided to include it in the financial literacy section of ROAR.”

Green shared about 100 randomly selected scholarship essays from across ISU, and DiSanza performed a qualitative analysis to identify common mistakes and effective approaches.

“I put myself back in the scholarship evaluator role. What would I have liked to have seen? What would have made it more persuasive?”

From that DiSanza generated four structural elements, refined and extended from his years on the committee. Students in the fall course will experience a series of lectures and exercises focused on helping them write their own essays. They will work through the structural components of essay writing in small groups, brainstorming ways different majors can make an impact in order to practice writing memorable and stand-out essays. Then they will each write a personal 500-1000 word scholarship essay.

“Everybody will walk out of class with an essay that will have feedback from a faculty member,”  DiSanza says. 

Competition for scholarships is steep. “In my experience there’s about 75 applicants for every scholarship,” he says. “There are far more applicants than there is scholarship money available. You must grab and hold attention to make a case that you’re deserving of the scholarship.”

Green’s expertise has been essential in shaping the new module. DiSanza integrated key information from the scholarship office into the lectures, reinforcing what freshmen hear during orientation but may not fully retain in the rush of those first weeks.

“I hope this change will help students better understand the scholarship structure at ISU,” DiSanza says. “That’s where Deb Green has been invaluable. In class students can ask questions and get meaningful feedback.”

The ROAR course has a proven record of success in helping students adjust to university life. “It has shown an impact in improving student success (retention) for a number of demographics, including women and most minority students,” DiSanza says.

DiSanza is excited about the new approach and its potential to help students succeed. “I wish I could have helped these students do a better job on their essays when I served on the selection committee. Now I can do that,” he says. “We can reach about 200 students, the number of students enrolled this fall.”