The First-Year Seminar (FYS) introduces students to Dickinson as a "community of inquiry" by developing habits of mind essential to liberal learning. Through the study of a compelling issue or broad topic chosen by their faculty member, students will:
-Critically analyze information and ideas
-Examine issues from multiple perspectives
-Discuss, debate and defend ideas, including one's own views, with clarity and reason
-Develop discernment, facility and ethical responsibility in using information, and
-Create clear academic writing
The small group seminar format of this course promotes discussion and interaction among students and between students and their professor. In addition, the professor serves as students' initial academic advisor. This course does not duplicate in content any other course in the curriculum and may not be used to fulfill any other graduation requirement.
All Dickinson first-year students arrive on campus for orientation knowing which seminar they will join.
The following First-Year Seminars are offered in the Fall of 2026:
Invisible Carlisle: Reclaiming the Waste We Create
Invisible Carlisle: Reclaiming the Waste We Create
Designing Your Life in College and Beyond: Leadership, Purpose, and Growth
Memoirs of Difference: Living and Triumphing in Marginalized Bodies
Facing the Chronic Health Challenges of the Early 21st Century
Resistance: People Power and Politics Across Space and Time
How Finance Made Civilizations Possible—and Continues to Shape Our Future
I Am Not Who/What You Think I Am: Being, Belonging, Becoming
The tin foil hat society
Yossarian Lives! Catch-22 from Homer to Here and Now
Music, Mediated: How Technology Impacts How We Listen and Hear
Navigating the Flow of Time
Modernity and Its Legacy: Past Ideas and Their Contemporary Importance
Awe, Wonder, and Transcendence
Modernity and its Critics
Puzzles, Patterns, and Stories in the Films of David Lynch
Philosophers and Prophets: Science Fiction Across Media
Modernity and its Critics
The Rocks We Rely On
Mental Illness: From Movies to Memoirs
Understanding the Human Place in Nature
What is it like to be a ______ ?
Fast Cars, Big Questions: Motorsports and American Culture
Persephone and Hades through the Ages
Just Kidding: Humor and the Good Life
It’s Time to Light the Fires and Kick the Tires: The Relevance of Dirt Track Racing in Central Pennsylvania
Heated Rivalry
Bodies By Design: Power, Technology, and the Politics of Enhancement
History of medicine and public health
More Human than Human: The Arts & Sciences Confront Evolution
How to Be Disagreeable
Incendiary Objects: A Century of Controversy in Modern Art
Playing to Learn: Harnessing Technology in K-12 to Facilitate Deeper Mathematical Understanding