First-Year Seminars

First-Year Seminars are focused on a professor’s personal interest, presented in a way that invites discussion.

These seminars offer the benefits of an experience often reserved for college seniors to students beginning their college career.

These courses, designed for and offered only to students in their first semester at Gettysburg College, provide an opportunity to work closely with a faculty member and a small cohort of peers to explore a topic that they all find interesting. First-Year Seminars employ and develop a variety of skills including writing, speaking, critical thinking, quantitative reasoning, and the use of technology or instrumentation.

All students in a First-Year Seminar live in the same residence hall, which provides them with an opportunity to integrate their academic and residential lives. This experience, alongside programming offered through the college’s extended orientation program, offers students the opportunity of learning and working with other students and faculty on common educational interests and goals while deliberately fostering connections that support the transition to college.

First-Year Seminars may include field trips, films, guest speakers, workshops, and community service projects. Many of these opportunities are designed for a specific seminar or group of related seminars.

First-Year Seminars at Gettysburg College