First-Year Seminar Program

The First-Year Seminar Program offers courses across a wide range of disciplines and topics. Enrollment is limited to a small number of first-year students. The seminars emphasize active, collaborative, and creative learning. Courses may fulfill specific distribution and/or major requirements.

Goals for the First-Year Seminar Program

  1. Shape student expectations of the values, rigor, aspirations, and rewards of the intellectual enterprise practiced in a vibrant and supportive academic community.

  2. Foster skills and habits of mind essential for intellectual inquiry.
  3. Build a sense of intellectual and social community among students from diverse backgrounds in a cooperative and collaborative learning environment.
  4. Create opportunities early in a student’s college career for close interaction with faculty and for the individualized instruction typical of a liberal arts education.
  5. Demonstrate how knowledge is constructed in a particular field.