Professor Killiam said faculty need to have incentives to want to teach first-year seminars as they do with honors seminars. Faculty who teach honors seminars teach the better students and receive extra pay. He said he thought this was the option faculty would favor. Ms. Taylor said that the first-year seminars look good from a recruiting standpoint, but do not hold up and ultimately are not good for retention. She said the seminars had failed to become a common experience because each course is taught differently and no common exercises have been planned.
Students take four other courses which can be considered an introduction to academic life.
The emphasis on skills varies from one seminar to another, and many of the seminars fall short of generating intellectual excitement. Members agreed that faculty would like students to take two solid writing-intensive courses in their first year. However, they could not reach a consensus on which option would be best. These courses will be designated by a bullet in the catalogue and are designed specifically with First Year Students in mind as each department sees fit. A message will be sent to Dean Lenz explaining that the Committee decided to be flexible in terms of time for next year.