Students will complete the First-Year Seminar in Critical Inquiry in their first semester.

Catalogue Description

Required of all first-year students, the First-Year Seminar in Critical Inquiry focuses on the processes of critical inquiry in a writing-intensive, small seminar.  Each seminar invites students to engage in a set of issues, questions, or ideas which can be illuminated by the disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives of the liberal arts.  Seminars are designed to enhance the intellectual skills essential for liberal learning and for successful participation in the College’s academic program.

Student Learning Objectives

Students are expected to develop the abilities, especially the writing skills, that are essential to critical thinking.  These abilities include interpreting complex texts, constructing an argument, supporting the argument with evidence, and defending the argument orally.  Critical thinking also requires the ability to appreciate and critique multiple perspectives, including one’s own.

Rationale

The Seminar provides a special intellectual opportunity for faculty and first-year students to participate in a small, discussion-oriented, multidisciplinary course. The course introduces students to the independent thinking and academic skills that they will need in subsequent courses, including Junior and Senior Independent Study.

Criteria for Courses in First-Year Seminar

All First-Year Seminars will:

• provide students with clear opportunities to meet the learning objectives;
• introduce questions and problems that are intellectually challenging as well as interesting and comprehensible to first-year students;
• approach issues from a number of perspectives, methods, and points of view;
• create the opportunity for students to pose problems and pursue their own questions in relation to the course themes;
• introduce students to substantive texts of a variety of kinds;
• require a minimum of five graded writing assignments that encourage students to engage in a variety of intellectual tasks, including synthesizing, judging, and comparing different approaches or points of view and drawing on several sources in constructing an argument.

In any given year, topics cover a wide range of issues and ideas. For example:

• The Drugs We Drink: Biological and Societal Perspectives
• World on Fire: The Religious Roots of Political Violence
• Heating Up the Planet: Response to a Catastrophe
• Aristotle and the Pursuit of Happiness
• Experiments in Reading and Writing: Solving the Mystery
• The Great War and Human Memory

» 2008 First Year Seminar Descriptions

» 2008 First Year Seminar Preference Form

» First Year Living Learning Program (FYLLP)

» Summer Reading Assignment
     The online forum where you can discuss the book A Long Way Gone is ready for your participation.

» “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier” (on sale at the Wilson Bookstore)

» Questions for Summer Reading

To submit your summer reading paper, please click here and attach the document (as a Microsoft Word or PDF file) to the email. The deadline is September 1, 2008.