Welcome! Here you’ll find a full list of all Fall 2026 First-Year Seminar (FSEM) offerings. Browse through the pages of classes, select a course from the first drop down menu, or browse by subject area. Please note that this site shows the FSEMs regardless of whether or not they are full, so there is no guarantee that a course will still be open at the time of your registration
The tech industry promises to improve our everyday lives by making things faster, easier, and better. Whatever you need, there’s an app for that. But does the tech industry really deliver on its promise to make lives better? In our daily interactions w …
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Cryptology is the area of mathematics that studies cryptography, the art of encrypting messages, and crypt-analysis, the science of breaking encrypted messages. This first-year seminar studies these ideas broadly through mathematical explorations accessible to the inquisitive student with only basic algebra skills.
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When you play a game, like poker or chess, the outcome depends on what you do, but it also depends on what the other players do. Many real-life situations can also be characterized this way.
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To survive today’s increasingly complex and volatile world, we each should develop financial literacy. While auditing was originally the sub-discipline of accounting dedicated to expressing an opinion as to the fairness of corporate financial statements, it has now become the art and science of gathering evidence for a host of different disciplinary objectives.
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Is science going too far? Is it pushing the boundaries of what should be done by what can be done? This FSEM will examine some of the greatest scientific advances in the last 50 years, the impacts they had on society, and the cost of these advancements.
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This interdisciplinary FSEM sets out to explore two big questions regarding endurance sports (defined as competitive sub-maximal physical activity over a prolonged period of time). It will also explicitly address related themes such as race, gender, wealth, and cheating.
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Are you interested in understanding and addressing one of the most critical issues of our time? Enroll in “Solving the Climate Crisis – a Science-Based Approach to Climate Adaptation and Mitigation” to gain a solid foundation in the science of climate change.
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We don’t have to look far today to find scientific issues viewed as controversial or with distrust—vaccines, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and climate change, just to name a few.
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This class examines earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis and related hazards, caused by motion of earth’s tectonic plates. We will explore well-known disasters, and examine why they were so destructive.
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