Academics
First-Year Seminar
All students at Saint Michael's College must enroll in a First-Year Seminar during their first or second semester. These writing-intensive seminars explore broad questions in the liberal arts and are restricted in enrollment, to encourage discussion and active learning.
The small class size allows instructors to get to know students well and to work closely with their writing. It also encourages students to work cooperatively, creating a small community of learners, a microcosm of the college as a whole. Through its emphasis on engaged participation, the seminar challenges students to take responsibility for their own education.
Topics vary from year to year, but all courses in the program aim to introduce students to the close analysis of primary texts, to interdisciplinary study and to reflection on cultural diversity.
Each seminar fulfills one area of study in the College's Liberal Studies Requirement.
Students can choose from a list of First-Year Seminar courses in humanities, social sciences or natural/mathematical sciences. Some examples are:
FS 111 The Examined Life: The Art, Craft, and Impact of Memoir
FS 114 A River Runs Through It: The Literature and Craft of Fly Fishing
FS 136 Global Studies
FS 153 Peace and Justice
For a complete list of First-Year Seminar classes and course descriptions, please refer to the college catalogue.
In addition to the various course selections in First-Year Seminar, all students share a common reading assignment the summer before classes start. For the summer of 2008, the text is Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower. There are book discussions and class assignments based upon the text's various themes.
For more information, contact:
Will Marquess
Coordinator of First-Year Seminars
Instructor of English
Saint Edmund's Hall 329
Phone: 802.654.2802
Box 171
E-mail: wmarquess@smcvt.edu