Foundations ~ First Year Seminar - Printer Friendly (pdf)

Description (3-3-0)
Through unique courses tied to a common theme, the First Year Seminar focuses on the intellectual expectations and values of the academic community and encourages participation in the broader culture of the University. The seminar is designed to emphasize foundational disciplines at the core of liberal learning: critical thinking; analytical reading; effective writing and speaking; informed curiosity; problem solving; locating and evaluating information through research; and student participation in artistic, intellectual, service, and cultural events on campus.

First Year Seminar Theme
The current theme of the First Year Seminar is "Exploration and Discovery" and it focuses on a series of questions that relate to our past, present and future. Some questions your First Year Seminar might investigate include: What does it mean to explore? What explorations and discoveries have made the greatest contributions to humanity? How have exploration and discovery helped human development, and how have they harmed human development? How do we evaluate our discoveries? What is the future of exploration and discovery, and how can we learn from our past in order to be able to shape our future?

Learner Objectives
Courses in this area should incorporate all the following objectives:

• By the end of this course, students will be able to:
• critically interpret, evaluate and analyze information from a variety of sources
• communicate orally, visually, and/or in writing
• access information for research, discriminating between reliable and unreliable sources
• demonstrate depth of knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the common theme