First-Year Experience
In Trinity College we recognize the importance of the first year at Duke to the development of our highly talented students. We focus special attention on students’ first-year academic experience, from housing on East Campus to courses and programs designed specifically for them. The links below highlight our first-year signature courses and programs. These opportunities connect students with our faculty and introduce the numerous ways students can tailor their Duke educations to their unique interests.
First-Year Advising
Advising in the first year ensures students make a successful transition to Duke. Advisors help them explore the curriculum, engage with faculty both inside and outside the classroom, and seek out resources and opportunities.
Trinity's first-year advising experience takes advantage of the residential structure on East Campus. Groups of academic advisors are assigned to individual residence halls; each works with 11 to 13 first-year residents. The advisors are supported by each residence hall's assigned academic dean, faculty in residence and residence coordinator. In addition to individual advisory meetings during the first year, advisors often hold group meetings in the East Union Marketplace and the Trinity Café.
By forging these connections in the first year, advisors and students collaborate in developing short- and long-term academic plans and laying foundations for important decisions to come in the sophomore year.
First-Year Seminars Program
Trinity's First-Year Seminars are small, discussion-based courses that inspire intellectual curiosity, develop their academic skills, and integrate new students into Duke's community of scholars.
First-year seminars are offered in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Many are interdisciplinary; others engage students in topics within a single academic field. Themes include global environmental change, film and visual culture, and urban design and politics.
First-Year Seminars bear the 49S number. Taught by senior faculty, these classes enroll only 15 first-year students per section.
Focus Program
The Focus Program for first-year students provides clusters of courses designed around an interdisciplinary theme. Students explore such issues as engineering and the urban environment, the performing arts, genomics, migration and globalization, global health, and social ideals. Focus faculty from diverse academic departments are leading researchers in their fields.
Writing 20
In Writing 20, Academic Writing, first-year students learn to read critically and to make effective use of what they’ve read in their own work as writers. Intimate seminars of 12 students are taught by postdoctoral fellows with experience in fields ranging from epidemiology and archeology to history and sociology. Each fall, the TWP publishes Deliberations, a journal of some of the best student essays from Writing 20.