First-Year Seminar
Start your Butler journey strong.
First-Year Seminar
Butler’s First-Year Seminar (FYS) introduces you to a topic of your choice from over 40 subjects. It also brings you into a close-knit community of first-year students who will be your seminar companions in a small class cohort. Taught by faculty members from disciplines across the University, your FYS group will also work with the same professor all year.
While engaged in seminar topics ranging from fairy tales, to professional wrestling, to living a meaningful life, you’ll be constantly challenged to develop the capacity to think and write clearly, critically, and creatively. FYS will give you the background you need to develop the kinds of effective skills it takes to succeed academically. By the final sessions, you’ll be a much better communicator, a clearer thinker, and a student better prepared for the academic, professional, and personal challenges of the coming years.
Mission Statement
First-Year Seminar (FYS) introduces students to the interactive classroom by providing a venue for self-discovery within a supportive community. Faculty members with expertise from disciplines across the university offer over forty different seminars. These seminars engage students in the best practices of civil and constructive conversation. As students explore and interrogate their topics, they learn to think, speak, and write more clearly, independently, critically, and persuasively. In these peer-centered discussions and collaborations, FYS students prepare to take the next steps in their academic, professional, and personal journeys.
Student Learning Outcomes
- To develop the capacity to think and write clearly, critically, and creatively.
- To introduce the student to effective habits for academic success.
- To reflect on important issues of the self, and in relation to local and global communities.
- To recognize and reflect on their own personal perspectives and biases.
- To learn and practice civil discourse in a constructive community.
- To learn to evaluate the quality, accuracy and appropriateness of evidence.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, all incoming first-year students must register for FYS 101 in the fall semester and FYS102 in the spring semester, no exceptions.
As there is no AP course equivalent to FYS, advanced placement credit does not apply towards First-Year Seminar.
A first-year student entering college for the first time in the spring semester or a first-year transfer student will enroll directly into a section of FYS 102 that does not require FYS 101 as a pre-requisite. To fulfill the FYS 101 portion of the Core requirement, the student can subsequently or concurrently enroll in an additional TI or Humanities course. These students will not enroll in FYS 101 the following semester or year. A Core Variance Form must be completed for these substitutions.
Students transferring to Butler after the first year, and after having attended another college or university who do not transfer in courses that fulfill the FYS requirement may substitute an additional TI course for each semester missed. By permission of the Faculty Director of the Core, other Humanities courses may substitute for one of these TI courses. A Core Variance Form must be completed for these substitutions.
For those replacing an FYS with another course(s), we will not double count a course for two or more areas of the Core. For example, Butler will not accept a single literature course for both TI and FYS.
Students who fail the first semester of FYS should still enroll in FYS 102, and will take an additional Texts & Ideas course to fulfill the FYS 101 requirement. Students who fail the second semester of FYS should take an additional Texts & Ideas course to fulfill the FYS 102 requirement.
Yes, as part of the Honors Program curriculum requirements, students in the Honors Program must enroll in an Honors-specific First-Year Seminar. Explore your options for Honors FYS courses.
FIRST-YEAR SEMINAR (FYS)
Women Writing the World, an FYS taught by Professor Natalie Carter, focuses on a wide variety of texts by women who represent global cultures. In the course, students analyze literature, film, journalistic projects, and other cultural materials as a means for understanding, working within, and changing the systems—political, social, economic, religious—that define women in our world.
First-Year Seminars
in Action
