First-Year Seminars constitute the gateway to the K-Plan and to college life for entering students, while also serving as the foundation of the Shared Passages Program. These seminars insure that every first-year student has one course in the fall term that can act as “home base,” where all students are equally new to college, classes are small enough to encourage engagement, interaction with a faculty member is the norm, and attention is paid to individual learners’ needs.

First-Year Seminars are designed to orient students to collegiate learning practices, with particular emphasis on critical thinking, writing, and speaking. In keeping with Kalamazoo College’s emphasis on intercultural education and social justice, they aim to engage students in the study of significant social and historical differences. They integrate collaborative and group work, research strategies, and effective discussions, all promoting active, engaged learning. They work to accustom students to modes of academic behavior likely to promote success in college, including class participation, productive approaches to assignments, visits to faculty members’ offices, and awareness of support structures for K students.

First-Year Seminars are linked to academic advising, the First-Year Experience program, Upjohn Library, and the Writing Center. They create connections with the components of the K-Plan: depth and breadth in the liberal arts, learning through experience, international and intercultural engagement, and independent scholarship.

Programmatic Components

• First-Year Seminars are not strictly discipline-based courses. They take an idea, event, theme, or question as their organizing principle and work at the edges, where areas of knowledge intersect with each other and with the “real world” of eighteen-year-olds.
• Seminars are limited to sixteen new students and are not open to those beyond the first year or to visiting international students.
• Seminars are primarily discussion-based, using other pedagogies as appropriate, including collaborative and group work.
• To improve writing, students complete frequent, short assignments, with ample feedback and opportunities for revision, emphasizing a variety of types of writing.
• All seminars require students to cross significant boundaries of difference: e.g., culture, race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, class, sexuality, historical period, etc.
• All seminars require students to cross significant boundaries of difference: e.g., culture, race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, class, sexuality, historical period, etc.
• All seminars include a research component, completed in collaboration with Upjohn Library reference librarians.
• Seminar faculty meet regularly to share successes, address problems, explore pedagogies, continue to develop seminar components, and integrate new resources.

Course Design and Learning Goals