First-Year Seminar

Students entering DePauw University typically take four academically rigorous courses each semester. One course, the First-Year Seminar, is a small, discussion-based class that ensures that the students and faculty instructor get to know one another well.  The small class size also fosters good academic discussions in which all students feel welcome to participate in the exploration of ideas, careful reading of texts, and critical thinking.

Each first-year seminar in the Asbury College of Liberal Arts is writing intensive. (School of Music first-year seminars address requirements for School of Music degrees.) First-Year Seminars introduce students to skills essential for success at DePauw generally, but focus on writing and oral communication specifically given their centrality to everything we do. The course begins nurturing essential skills in writing, thinking and speaking with the expectation that these skills will be reinforced and further developed throughout students’ time at DePauw both in courses specific to the writing curriculum and in broader general education and departmental/program curricula.

First-Year Seminars are not designed to be the first step toward a specific major or career. Other introductory courses taken in the first two years allow for exploration of possible fields of study or majors.  Instead, first-year seminars are designed to open new areas of interest and to allow students to think in new ways.  Most seminars are interdisciplinary, introducing ideas and ways of thinking from more than one discipline (e.g., political science and environmental studies or chemistry and forensics).

First-Year Seminars count as a full academic course required for the degree. (DePauw works on the course system, not the credit hour system.) For most first-year seminars, the instructor serves as the students' academic advisor. Students generally remain with this advisor until they are ready to declare a major in their second year.

A student mentor is assigned to each seminar group. The group will take part in orientation activities together and will meet outside of class to participate in programs and discussions about college life and campus issues.

Redesigning Landscape, Fall 2011

In addition to a being a unique learning environment for first-year students, First-Year Seminars provide creative teaching opportunities for faculty members as well.

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Forensics: The Science of Crime, Fall 2010

Designed to be interdisciplinary, First-Year Seminars often bring in various modes of learning and specialists from outside the university.

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