Every year, almost 1,500 students take a CAS First-Year Seminar. These students come from dozens of countries, a range of backgrounds, and have wildly diverging interests; they will later find their own path, major in different subjects, and contribute to the world in unique ways. Whatever First-Year Seminar they take, they will bring something from that class with them on their journey.
The First-Year Seminar is a place for experimentation, a place to play with ideas and different ways of looking at the world, and a place to be brave and try new things. Students take seminars on something they never cared about previously, and discover a life-long passion. Students push themselves to write something for the public, and find their work published as a first year student. Students build lasting relationships with peers, and also with faculty members who show them a world that is bigger, more complicated, and yet more accessible and with more opportunities than they ever thought.
See below for news and details of some of the unique projects students and instructors developed from their First-Year Seminar.
