Welcome to the Freshman Celebration 2020!
The Freshman Celebration is an annual CSUN event that showcases work created by first-time freshmen enrolled in University 100 during the fall semester at Cal State Northridge. The event usually has a dual format with traditional projects displayed on-site at the showcase and digital projects displayed online using Portfolium. Portfolium is a digital portfolio network that students can use throughout their college career and beyond to showcase their work, projects, and activities. Due to the virtual environment of the fall 2020 semester, all projects will be displayed using Portfolium.
The 15th Freshman Celebration was on November 17 and 18, 2020.
Link to all of the 2020 projects
2020 Judges' Grand Prize Awards
- Motion-Graphics project (animation, video, etc.): Walking in Deaf Shoes, created by Debbi Mercado's Deaf, Hard of Hearing, & Deaf Studies U100 section
- Still Image(s) project (photography, graphic design, illustration): Journey to Become Educated, created by Elizabeth Riegos Olmos' EOP FreshStart U100 section
Judges' Grand Prize Criteria
- Critical thinking (defined in the Information Competence Vocabulary list at Oviatt Library as “The process of effectively examining and questioning information in order to weigh evidence and make choices and/or take action”; see https://library.csun.edu/researchassistance/vocabulary#C)
- Including appropriate credit to sources, if applicable
- Significance and importance of content and/or meaning
- Creativity, artistry, and aesthetic value
About the Freshman Celebration
The first Freshman Celebration at CSUN took place in 2006 with participation limited to Freshman Connection students. In 2007 the Celebration was opened to all students enrolled in a fall U100 class. As enrollment has continued to grow, so has the Celebration.
Each fall, freshmen taking University 100 are invited to participate in a campus-wide celebration of their first-semester academic achievements. This showcase, the Freshman Celebration, is modeled on CSUN's Undergraduate and Graduate Student Research and Creative Works Symposium. The event is essentially a two-day festival, during which students and visitors come and go throughout the day between approximately 9:30 a.m. and 3:15 p.m. The student projects often (but not always) respond to the current year's Freshman Common Reading, which in 2019-2020 is The Far Away Brothers by Lauren Markham.
Traditional projects including posters, sculptures, and a wide range of interactive exhibits, are displayed on-site in the University Student Union during the two days of the Celebration. Digital (Portfolium) projects include videos, slideshows, blogs, and more.