Academics
First-Year Seminar
Taken during your first semester as a four-credit graded course, the First-Year Seminar at Southwestern University introduces students to the practice of making connections, with a special focus on incorporating perspectives from multiple disciplines.
The mission of Southwestern University’s First-Year Seminar Program is to help you begin to practice an education that arcs over the whole course of the your experience and across the curriculum, connecting the questions and perspectives you encounter and the skills you develop to each other and to the world. The First-Year Seminar (FYS) is a concurrent rather than preliminary experience, focused on exploratory topics or themes that help students think about what they are learning in their other classes and their larger education. Seminars introduce and reflect upon intellectual skills common to the liberal arts: formulating cogent questions, forging connections between methods of inquiry, recognizing and challenging assumptions, seeking out and listening to multiple perspectives, and rethinking the role of reading, writing, and discussion in inquiry and student-centered learning.
As you read the FYS summaries, you will discover that the topics are engaging and often edgy. But don’t be fooled. Seminars are real courses designed to introduce intellectual skills common to the liberal arts: formulating cogent questions, forging connections between methods of inquiry, recognizing and challenging assumptions, seeking out and listening to multiple perspectives, and rethinking the role of reading, writing, and discussion in inquiry and student-centered learning. Seminars meet daily during orientation week, which begins Monday, August 16, and continue meeting twice per week until October 28.
What do I do next?
You will submit your FYS preferences after you have paid your enrollment deposit when you sign up for Sprog Orientation Day. You will find out your FYS assignment in mid-June.