Two Common First Year Seminar (FYS) Questions:
1. What if students fail to take an FYS course in either the fall or Spring of their first year?
The system is set up to block students from registering for FYS if they have 30 credits or more. When students don’t complete FYS within the first year, then it’s a matter of putting permission codes in place. This would be done by department chairs or student records managers. It is inconvenient, but we suspect that as faculty, advisors and students gain experience, this will become less common and efficiency will improve. [Remember that FYS became a degree requirement starting this Fall of 2021, so students matriculating with the “old” get ed requirements are not required to have completed an FYS in order to graduate]
2. What if students enter with dual credits or transfer credits that add to 30 credits or more?
This one is a bit trickier, since one could imagine two extremes:
a. A student with many credits, yet most of them were actually high school courses (i.e., not an approximation for the experience of taking a college class), and therefore taking an FYS would most likely make sense; or
b. A high school student who actually took university courses, on a university campus, and therefore has gained real university experience.
For scenario a), it would be best to simply seek a permission code, as in the answer to the first question. For scenario b), however, there’s a bit of a judgement call for the student and advisor to make regarding whether or not they think an FYS would be valuable. In the event that they don’t think so, then it would be appropriate to submit an exemption petition to the General Education Committee. [Notably, there is not yet a set criterion that would make this an automatic determination: the Gen Ed Co-Directors and FYS Director foresee a need establish these criteria and process for determining exemptions.]
Fun Facts Related to FYS:
Some classes that some have thought fulfilled the FYS requirement that actually DO NOT: HON-H 100 Freshman Honors Seminar and EDUC-U 100 Threshold Seminar do not fulfill the FYS requirement