Two studies examined the short- and long-term effects of teaching strategic reading to first-year college students in a stand-alone course. In study one, developmental readers (N=36) learned PLAN, a strategic reading heuristic. Significant pretest-posttest growth was found using cognitive, metacognitive, and affective measures, though no gain was found on a measure of self-efficacy. Strategy transfer was found during the next semester according to self-report. In a second study of developmental readers over four years, a larger treatment group (N=51) outperformed a control group (N=78) on a standardized test and average grade in a reading-intensive history course. These developmental readers seemed to learn strategic reading skills that transferred to a future core curriculum course.