Emerging from the most significant reform to Hopkins’ undergraduate curriculum in 70 years, the mission of the First-Year Seminars (FYS) program is to welcome first-year students warmly and rigorously into the intellectual life of the university, honing the lifelong habits of mind students will need to explore and address the world’s most intractable issues. Our undertaking is animated by a set of common seminar objectives. Among many worthy and important goals, FYS seeks to:

• Cultivate intellectual curiosity and community
• Establish foundational critical thinking skills and habits of mind
• Foster academic belonging while encouraging meaningful
• Cultivate civil civil discourse across disciplinary interests and from diverse backgrounds.
• Promote faculty-student interaction and mentorship.

A Bigger Picture

FYS is one-half of the Krieger School’s First-Year Foundation (FYF) — a required two-course sequence of one First-Year Seminar in the fall and one First-Year Writing (FYW) course in the spring. Krieger’s FYF delivers a sense of intellectual rigor and community in the first year of college, foundational skills essential to future success, and closer ties between faculty and undergraduate students. For more on the writing curriculum in the Krieger School, please visit the University Writing Program.