First-Year Seminar
Every Brandeis education is fueled by exploration, imagination, inquiry, creativity and participation in our diverse community.
The First-Year Seminar program is an exciting launchpad for your academic journey! In your first year, you'll dive into a vibrant mix of disciplinary perspectives and diverse ideas through engaging reading, writing, and argumentation. This program is designed to equip you with essential skills that will empower you not just at Brandeis, but in all your future endeavors.
You'll have the opportunity to explore a variety of topic-driven seminars that inspire you to craft compelling arguments, back them up with keen observations and solid evidence, and articulate your thoughts with clarity and persuasion.
The First-Year Seminar (FYS) is your chance to sharpen your academic reading and writing skills while immersing yourself in the study of rhetoric and thought-provoking texts. From day one, you'll encounter captivating ideas and perspectives that will ignite your intellectual curiosity.
First-Year Seminars are designed to instill and enhance flexible writing and research skills. Each seminar will feature a selection of readings that align with its themes, stimulating discussion, deepening understanding, and serving as a foundation for your writing assignments. You will also engage with writing as a crucial aspect of both academic and professional life, recognizing its role in fostering critical thinking and learning to identify the conventions of disciplinary writing.
The seminars will meet the Brandeis Core first-year writing requirement, which aims to improve students’ written communication skills during their careers at Brandeis.
Learning Goals
Upon completion of the First-Year Seminar, students will be able to:
- Articulate elements of effective writing, including the revision process, and integrate them into their own work
- Identify and assess central ideas, arguments, and concepts in foundational texts
- Generate original questions and pursue independent research
- Construct well-reasoned arguments and substantiate them with observations and evidence
- Identify and evaluate sources and use them responsibly
- Provide constructive feedback to peers and respond to feedback provided by others
- Develop awareness of disciplinary differences in writing and adapt their writing to different genres, contexts, and audiences
2024-25 First-Year Seminar Oversight Committee
| Name | Department |
|---|---|
| Lisa Rourke | University Writing Program |
| Katrin Fischer | University Writing Program |
| Albion Lawrence | Physics |
| Darlene Brooks Hedstrom | Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Classical and Early Mediterranean Studies |
| Bernard Yack | Politics |
| Dmitry Troyanovsky | Theater Arts |
| Olga Papaemmanouil | Computer Science, Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs |