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Message from Robert C. Lagueux, Director

Approach

The First-Year Seminar, a required foundational course in the College’s Core Curriculum, provides a common intellectual experience to all of Columbia’s first-year students. In small classes of no more than 18, The First-Year Seminar acclimates students to the four fundamental activities that members of the College community engage in: questioning, exploring, communicating, and evaluating. The First-Year Seminar provides students the opportunity to pursue and practice these fundamental skills during the first year of college, in an atmosphere that encourages and values inquiry and communication in a variety of media and genres.

Curriculum

Students practice questioning, exploring, communicating, and evaluating within the context of several topics, including Self and Identity, Ethics in Community, and Manifesting Vision. Each topic has one or more core texts that form the basis of discussion and inquiry. We use a diverse group of texts that, in the past, have included Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Sophocles’s Antigone, and Paul Haggis’s film Crash. Working both individually and in collaboration with each other, students produce Topic Studies in a variety of media, each accompanied by a written Rationale document.

Robert C. Lagueux
Director, The First-Year Seminar

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