First Year Seminar

​​​​​​Football is America’s most popular sport. It’s a cultural phenomenon that brings together family, friends, and communities, while providing a source of “friendly” competition between towns, cities and states. At the professional level, the NFL is a multi-billion-dollar industry that’s essential to national media, local journalism, and many other areas of the economy. But for all its popularity, football remains a source of persistent social and political controversy. In this course, students explore the virtues and vices of America’s game, including a central focus on the problem of player safety and head trauma. Students will also explore issues surrounding youth football safety, player activism, racial justice, gender equity, LGBTQ rights, domestic violence, public funding of stadiums, players unions, ownership power, sports betting, pay for college athletes, sports journalism, the role of analytics, and more. This course focuses primarily on the NFL; students will be asked to stay up to date on the current football season and to participate in a class fantasy football league. Students will not be asked to play football or attend games in person.

What is the point of play? Children play because it is pleasurable, but does it serve a purpose as well? This seminar will explore the nature of play and how it impacts children's cognitive, social, emotional, and biological development. We will consider diverse topics such as why animals play, gender segregation in play, imaginary friends, the importance of recess, play therapy, and toys as socializing agents. We will especially focus on how spontaneous free play can support children's learning. Finally, we will consider the role of play in the life of the college student.

George Washington, Winston Churchill, Queen Boudica, and Genghis Khan. The annals of human history are filled with examples of these and other valiant leaders and vile dictators. But how can we assess the positive and negative qualities of leadership that make leaders great, terrible, or merely mediocre? This course will examine theories of leadership that stem from multiple disciplines, including political science, communication, business administration, and military science, while also examining a rich diversity of political and senior wartime leaders, both past and present.

​​​​​​This course is an overview of the African presence in the French imaginary and society. Considering that the colonies were once part of the French colonial empire and that the indigenous were French citizens, this course will analyze the successive statuses and the trajectories of the African subject in contact with France from the colonization to the contemporary period. By analyzing the period of colonization, the successive waves of migrations and finally the difficulties faced by French citizens of African descent, students will learn about the complexity of the relationship between France and Africa. Ultimately, students will learn through a variety of materials that the African subject who was first a native, then an immigrant and finally a “banlieusard” seems to remain a second-class citizen in the French imaginary.

Do you like to solve puzzles and play games? This is a hands-on, active-learning style course where we will play games and solve puzzles and along the way discover interesting ideas in mathematics. Students will be introduced to elementary ideas in college mathematics by looking for patterns. The mathematics in this course is designed to be accessible to all incoming students. Topics we explore will include graph theory, topology, probability, and cryptography.

​​​​​Finding your voice, making change, and building a movement are increasingly important as we look toward the future. But how do we do it? And more importantly, how do we do it effectively? What works and what doesn’t? Research shows that nonviolence is the most successful strategy. Does that surprise you? Let’s talk about what nonviolence really means, why it is so successful, and how you can use it to amplify your voice, work for social change and bring others to your cause. We’ll have a good time unearthing some real creativity along the way as we figure out how to make change happen.