The First-Year Seminars, all numbered 49S, are intended to serve as gateway courses for new undergraduate students at Duke. Most basically, these seminars, as small group learning experiences, will introduce freshmen to the kind of academic discourse, written work, and standards that they will need to familiarize themselves with to be successful students in college. Moreover, seminars permit students to engage with other students and their professor as a community of scholars. Building such a sense of academic community is important to students new to the institution. It is in the interest of promoting these goals of the First-Year Seminar program that we recruit only fully-fledged, experienced faculty to teach a 49S seminar; graduate students are not permitted to teach these seminars.
If you are interested in offering a First-Year Seminar, please click on the "Seminar Application" link in the left column. It will take you to the application forms.
We thank you for your interest in the First-Year Seminar Program. Please read the document below for additional information and suggestions you may wish to consider as you prepare your syllabus following approval of your First-Year Seminar.
Norman Keul, Program Director
It is one of the advantages of seminars that students can more easily participate actively in class than in a larger, lecture-based courses. While seminar topics and their pedagogical goals may vary, most attach particular importance to class discussion of materials prepared outside of class. I encourage you to consider this approach. You may also want to consider asking your students to make one or more class presentations during the semester. Using students’ papers as a basis for discussion can also be valuable. Many students enjoy and profit from such opportunities to engage the course material and their peers in active discussion. In evaluating students in seminars, it is common for faculty to take class participation substantially into account.
Your students will all be freshmen. As such, they are likely to be enthusiastic learners and rewarding to teach. At the same time, their relative inexperience in the academy makes it more likely that some may lack the skills in writing, research, making class presentations, etc. than older, more experienced students you’ve taught can be counted on to have. This doesn’t mean that you cannot or should not make rigorous demands of them. However, you may not be able to make assumptions about their base of knowledge in your field and may find it necessary or helpful to offer your students some specific guidance in approaching the work in your course.
In keeping with the observations made above, might I suggest that you consider requiring several shorter papers throughout the course of the semester rather than one term paper at the end as you may be accustomed to doing in seminars offered to upperclass students. This gives you an opportunity to see early in the semester and throughout the term how your students are progressing with their writing so you can perhaps assist those who may be weaker writers. Bear in mind that the first-year writing course, Writing 20, is offered to half of the freshman class in the Fall and the other half in the Spring. Therefore, your course represents one of your students’ first college-level courses in which substantial, qualitatively more demanding writing is expected. Assigning several shorter papers might work out better for you and them than a single term paper. That said, if you prefer for your students to write a term paper, you could require them to provide an interim outline and/or progress reports or drafts so that you can be assured that the assignment progresses successfully.
Quite a few first-year students have much to learn about time and work management, and your seminar may offer them valuable practice that will serve them well throughout their undergraduate years. Indeed, as you may know, it has become a priority of Trinity College to encourage undergraduates to engage in mentored research during their undergraduate careers and to write an honor’s thesis in the final year. You could help the College as well as your students if you work with them to develop the sorts of skills and attitudes towards academic work that will serve them well and perhaps incline them to pursue a capstone experience at the end of their time at Duke.
Please regard my suggestions as food for thought, which I hope may be of some benefit to you. Feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss any of the points that I have touched upon or if I can assist you in any way. Remember, too, to contact the office of Michele Rasmussen, Associate Dean for Pre-Major Students, should you find that one or more of your students are struggling in your course.
Thanks and good luck.
--NK