First-Year Seminars Program

First-Year Seminars have particular aims that often require faculty members to adjust their pedagogy. Perhaps the most important of these is the obligation to introduce students to the new demands, expectations and opportunities of a large research university. Students in a FYS are only a few months removed from high school, and the FYS classroom can be an important location for educating them about the very nature of a university. Faculty members often include assignments that help students locate themselves physically and professionally on campus (libraries, labs, support services, computing resources, media centers, museums etc.). Likewise, good seminars also attempt to help students find their intellectual footing, schooling them in techniques and familiar forms of reading (entire books, professional journal articles) and writing (lab reports, review articles, research papers). Faculty members are often explicit and intentional in helping students understand their role as members of a seminar or a discussion section. Since the courses are located in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, it is equally important that First-Year Seminars emphasize the value of broad, cross-field exploration of knowledge characteristic of the liberal arts.

In addition to these goals, a good First-Year Seminar should also introduce students to themes, questions, and ways of thinking within the division and the discipline. It might introduce students to faculty research as well, or to critical current questions in the field. Faculty should not assume, however, that students intend to major in the discipline. First Year Seminars are more exploratory than introductory. Poorly designed seminars have tended to dig too deeply, too quickly into the discipline, to treat the course as an introduction to the field, or to focus narrowly on faculty interests at an advanced level. Placing content delivery over skills development has not proven successful in these courses! Nor has converting existing upper-level or graduate seminars, or standard lecture classes. First-Year Seminars are a form all their own.

First-Year Seminar teaching, when well-conceived, can be among the most satisfying pedagogical experiences on campus. Faculty consistently report leading their students through substantial gains in analytical, interpretive, and social skills development. Incoming students tend to be eager and committed, and once they understand the new context of the university, they often thrive in FYS courses.