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Undergraduate Program

The Freshman Seminar

Beginning with the fall, 1994 entering class, each William and Mary freshman has been required to take a freshman seminar. The objective of our freshman seminar program is to help students develop their ability to engage in critical thinking and independent learning and to begin the challenging and rewarding process of helping students move from being passive consumers of knowledge to being creative, engaged scholars.

With a maximum enrollment of 15 students, freshman seminars provide a small group learning experience and the opportunity to interact closely with faculty. The College offers about 100 seminars each year taught by faculty from 26 departments and programs in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. All freshman seminars are reading-, writing-, and discussion-intensive. Most introduce students to research methods and strategies and require them to do significant research projects. While the teaching faculty and topics change from semester to semester, some examples from recent years are: "Effects of Technology of Civilization" (Physics); "Fifth Century Athens: Crucible of Democracy" (Classical Studies); "The Two Gulf Wars and American Foreign Policy" (Government); "The Navajo" (Anthropology); "Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Plate Tectonics" (Geology); and "American Autobiography" and "The World of Shakespeare's Sonnets" (English). Students who enroll in freshman seminars affiliated with the Sharpe Community Partnerships Program have the opportunity to apply what they are learning to research projects in the Williamsburg community.

During the junior and senior years, William and Mary students have a large number of opportunities to work closely with faculty on original research projects. The College's faculty sees the freshman seminar program as the first step toward preparing students for the creative and rigorous thinking, writing, and research that they will be doing at the upper-division level.

• Freshman Seminars: Definition and Elaboration of Criteria