First-year students are enrolled in a First Year Seminar, a semester-long, three-credit course. In this course, both a faculty member and a mentor from the student body provide support. The faculty member teaching this seminar also acts as Academic Advisor, offering a chance for newcomers to become acquainted with them. Additionally, a student knowledgeable in the seminar's subject is selected by the faculty member to serve as an Academic Mentor. This mentor takes part in the First Year Seminar to assist in navigating the demands and opportunities of university studies.

This year’s first-year seminar students showcased their experiences last Friday in the Nielsen Auditorium and gave a wide range of insights into how they tackled the topics of each course. Dean David Mills got the seminar started in an inspiring speech, sharing his own experiences as an undergraduate student and his initial frustrations in discovering his passion, which ended up being literary appreciation and analysis. “My own first-year experience led me to the Academy, where I grew to have a love of literature, something I didn’t have previously,” he remembered. Mills explained the procedure of the evening, which offered students, faculty, and staff the opportunity to participate in a series of presentations and experiential exhibitions where everyone could get an overview of the content of each FYS course, which included: 

AHT 199: Land ho! Oceanic Encounters and the Planetary Imagination 

BUS 199: Sustainability and Digital Transformation 

CLCS 199: The Pursuit of Happiness 

COM 199: You Will Make the Difference! The Power of Constructive Journalism in Media 

Academic mentors led interested attendees to engage with the course content in an effort to spread the knowledge gained over the course of the semester. For example, the “Pursuit of Happiness” showcase handed out smiley, stone-cold, and frown face stickers to participants, in which they divulged their emotional state and got feedback on how happiness is handled as a goal or everyday occurrence in various cultures. Music, dance, and oratory echoed in the halls of Kaletsch campus as the Franklin community reflected on a semester’s work well done. Held traditionally on the last day of classes before final exam week, the First-Year Seminar Showcase is an unmissable Franklin event. This year’s iteration concluded with a seminar-wide competitive multiple-choice game, Kahoot!-style, bringing first-year students together as a collective cohort and uniting them before going their separate ways on holiday.

The Spring semester promises to be a time of new seminars, new beginnings, and another chance for the freshman class to continue their comprehensive liberal arts journey here at Franklin.

 

Photo credits: Alexandra Hoffman

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