First Year Seminar

What is a First-Year Seminar?

Students talking on the quad

Each first-year student takes a first-year seminar or FYS in their first Fall semester at Bates. Topics vary from year to year, but FYS courses represent a broad range of interdisciplinary issues and questions addressed within the tradition of the liberal arts. The First-Year Seminar (FYS) is the central academic component of a Bates student’s First-Year Experience. 

The FYS provides students with valuable opportunities to learn about resources at Bates that support curricular and co-curricular exploration, health and wellness goals, and discovery of self as a valued, included, responsible, and responsive member of the broader Bates community. To that end, the FYS includes a set of Lyceum-based First-Year Experience (FYE) workshops, which align with the 6 values that structure a student’s FYE Summer Resources and New Student Orientation.

All FYS courses are tagged as W1 courses.

If the FYS is a W1, what is the W1?

Student participating in a crowd sourced art project

Courses that carry the W1 tag help students to develop a useful process for writing, to transfer the writing skills with which they enter college to their studies at Bates, and to acquire a foundation of skills that they can then transfer to writing in subsequent courses. 

The writing-attentive curriculum at Bates is designed to provide students with a solid footing in using writing as a means for communication, scholarship, intellectual discovery, and civic action. While writing and communication are woven throughout the Bates curriculum, writing receives explicit focus in a three-tiered writing requirement that must be completed at Bates over a student’s four years. 

As part of their General Education Requirements, students must take at least 1 W1 course (most often the student’s FYS), at least 1 W2 course (most often a seminar in the student’s major), and 1 W3 (most often the capstone within the student’s major)

Is the FYS part of a major? If I am thinking about a particular major, should I take an FYS in that major area of study?

Students studying in the Library

Students do not need to be concerned with your possible major or possible minor when choosing an FYS. 

Enrollment in an FYS is its own requirement (it fulfills the W1 and it may fulfill if a particular Mode of Inquiry) within the General Education Requirements, and taking a certain FYS has no impact on whether a student will be able to major or minor in a particular field of study.