• By the end of Freshman year, we want students to be able to write really well. Freshman Seminar sections discuss and engage in all sorts of writing – journals, response papers, and formal writing assignments. These are designed to prepare you for our writing intensive core curriculum, especially in the sophomore, junior, and senior years.
  · Freshman Seminar provides a non-random environment in which to address issues of student adjustment to college. In other words, instead of relegating discussion of issues of college adjustment to outside the classroom (whether it be at meals, in the dorms, etc.), Freshman Seminar is a course which makes time to ask students how the adjustment to college is going. This adjustment is a significant one for students (and parents!); we believe that it is important for students and faculty to discuss this in a somewhat more formal setting, where faculty are concerned about student adjustment and students can hear from peers how the process is going.
  
• Freshman Seminar is designed to help explain to students what the purpose of a Catholic liberal arts education is. During the academic year, we address three themes – work, education, and values – and by means of these themes, we address the purposes of the kind of education we offer.
  

The following are the common requirements of all Freshman Seminar sections:

Required

1. The course requires a thematic focus on education, work, and values. Treatment of education and work takes place during the first semester; treatment of what students value occurs during the second semester.

2. There are four required readings in Freshman Seminar. These readings are as follows:

• Education:
  • John Henry Newman, either “What Is A University?” or “Knowledge Viewed in Relation to Professional Skill”
  • Paulo Freire, “The Banking Concept of Education"
• Work:
  • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Work as Flow”
  • Dorothy Sayers, “Why Work?”

In addition, all faculty for the 2000-2001 academic year have agreed to read Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (in response to “A Call for Unity” from the Clergymen of Alabama) during the values inquiry portion of FS.

3. The following “orientation” activities are required at some point during the academic year:

• library
• career center

4. Writing:

The program utilizes the writing-as-process model.
a. A student profile is required during the Fall semester.
b. Student journals are required 2-3 times per week during the Fall semester. They are optional during the Spring semester.
c. During the academic year, students must write 6 portfolio papers, and of these 4 must be multi-draft essays and 2 must be single-draft essays. One multi-draft essay must be written in connection with each theme (work, education, and values). Two multi-draft essays must be written each semester.
d. Students should provide proper documentation in their essays. Freshman Seminar uses the most recent Modern Language Association (MLA) parenthetical style. Diana Hacker's The Bedford Handbook for Writers offers an extensive guide to using the MLA and APA (American Psychological Association) styles.
e. In order for students to pass the College Writing Proficiency requirement, they must have a rating of Satisfactory (C- or above) on 4 of the 6 portfolio essays, and of these 4, 3 must be multi-draft essays and 1 must be a single-draft essay.
f. Each multi-draft essay counts 10% of the year’s final grade; each single draft essay counts 5% of the year’s final grade; the portfolio as a whole counts for 50% of the grade for the year.
g. Second readers are utilized for all multi-draft essays (not for single-draft essays). The second reader responds with an S or U ranking of each essay. (Satisfactory = A to C-, and Unsatisfactory = D+ to F.) The second reader also has the option of offering comments.
h. Adjudication: In cases where the assessments of the instructor and the second reader differ, the instructor sends the essay to a third reader for adjudication. The adjudicator provides comments to justify his or her assessment.

5. The following issues of writing will be covered by FS sections during the two semesters:

FALL SEMESTER

Specific writing issues:

• Invention techniques
• Thesis development
• Introductory paragraph (inverted funnel, anecdote, quotation, reversal)
• Topic sentences
• Coherence of body paragraphs
• Developing and presenting support (including use of citations)
• Unity in body paragraphs
• Concluding paragraph
• Revising
• Word choice (wordiness, effective language, effective vocabulary)
• Appealing to your audience (knowledge, emotions)
  

Grammar/style: (Note: these are best treated individually based upon student need and performance. But all of these problems should be eliminated from student papers as soon as possible.) In general, we are asking students to learn the conventions of academic style. These include:

• Spelling
• Sentence fragments or incomplete sentences
• Subject-verb agreement
• Pronoun agreement
• Wordiness
• Clarity of expression
• Use of the apostrophe
• Correct citation format
  
• Correct book title format
  

SPRING SEMESTER:

Analytical Writing (this may well be done first semester, but it certainly should be done by the end of second semester)

Research Writing
Argumentative Writing (presenting arguments, support: evidence; reasoning: logical fallacies, refuting counter arguments, audience); in this context, introduce and develop the principles of logos, pathos, and ethos

6. Assessment

A final exam must be given at the end of each semester. A letter grade must be given at the end of each semester. Instructors are free (and even encouraged) to make the final exam a single-draft essay.

7. Failing FS

Occasionally, students fail either one or both semester of Freshman Seminar. If a student fails a semester of FS, the student does not repeat FS (as he or she would for other core classes failed); instead, the student simply gets no credit for the course and needs to take an additional 3-credit course in order to graduate.

More complex is the relationship between failing the course and failing the writing proficiency requirement (see above, #4e). A student may pass the course both semesters and fail the writing proficiency requirement or fail the course (one or both semesters) and yet pass the writing proficiency requirement. In each case, failing the college writing proficiency requirement will require a student to work with the Writing Center during the sophomore year. And, as stated above, failing the course will require not repeating the course but making up elsewhere the three credits.