Each first-year student participates in a small, writing-intensive, first-year seminar with no more than 14 other students. This First Year Seminar (or FYS) is designed to strengthen students' intellectual skills which are essential to liberal learning and to their success in the College's academic program.

In their FYS course, students will learn to:

  • read a variety of texts with understanding and critical judgment,

  • understand the validity and uses of different kinds of evidence,
  • perceive, analyze, and value the perspectives of other thinkers while recognizing and critiquing their own,
  • formulate meaningful questions and pose significant problems within the course topic,
  • synthesize material from several sources in order to construct an argument and to express ideas,
  • move, both in their writing and discussion, from the expression of opinion to the forumulation and grounding of a persuasive argument, and
  • express written ideas clearly, logically, and persuasively.

Each year, FYS courses are offered in several disciplines and their topics cover a wide range of issues and ideas so that each incoming first-year may take the one that most closely matches his/her interests.

For example, some of Fall 2006's offerings include:
  • "Election 2008: Understanding the Major Issues"
  • "Cultural Bomb: Literature and Film of Africa and the Diaspora"
  • "Inside/Outside: New York City and Immigration"
  • "Quantum Leaps: Implications of War on Scientific Achievement"
  • "The Psychology and Persuasion of Advertising"
  • "Utopian and Dystopian Visions"
  • "Patterns in Nature: Chaos, Complexity, and Networks"

(The previous was adapted from http://academics.wooster.edu/fys and more information can be found there.)