All entering Middlebury students take a First-Year Seminar during their first semester on campus. These seminars are writing intensive courses, limited to 15 students each, and they are taught by regular, full-time faculty members who also serve as students' academic advisers for their first three semesters at Middlebury. Seminar topics, which change from year to year, are selected by the individual professor and generally reflect that faculty member's research interests or an area of expertise not directly addressed in departmental courses. These are not survey courses. Rather they are designed to prick students' intellectual curiosity in a particular subject, and to encourage them to pursue a focused interest in depth. Many of the seminars offer interdisciplinary perspectives; most include activities outside the classroom; all seminars help students develop their reading, thinking, writing, and speaking skills.
Seminar topics extend over 40 different academic areas. Some recent topics include:
Beyond Cowboys: The Literary West
Modern Age of Science
Contemporary Ireland through Fiction and Film
Crime & Punishment in American History
Sustainable Lands, Wild Lands: Toward a Conservation Paradigm
The Economics of Social Issues
The Age of Crusades: Religion, Society, and Politics in the Middle Ages
Please read our mission statement and goals for the program.