First-Year Seminar
The First-Year Seminar is a small, discussion-based course taken in a student's first year. Topics range from the history of sugar to big tech policy, but every seminar builds the same skills: how to think, argue and engage with ideas alongside a close group of peers and faculty.
What's Required
Students complete one First-Year Seminar. Seminars are small and are taught by faculty across a range of disciplines.
What Students Develop
First-Year Seminars build important foundational skills: how to read carefully, write with clarity and defend an argument in conversation. These aren't a warm-up for a real education; they are that education, practiced from day one.
The First-Year Seminar also connects to the broader Brandeis Core, which is designed so that the skills students build here carry through every course they take — and into whatever comes after Brandeis.
- Clear communication
- Teamwork and collaboration
- Technological fluency
- Quantitative reasoning
- Global understanding and social responsibility
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