First Year Experience at UIS

First Year Seminar (FYS) at UIS is a program of small, topic-based courses designed to introduce new, first-year students to content from an academic discipline while also developing foundational skills for academic success in college. Students take a first-year seminar ideally in their first semester. Seminars are 3 credit hours and fulfill the general education Freshman Seminar requirement. The course may also satisfy a second general education category in Humanities or Social Science if it has attained that attribute through the governance process. Each seminar is comprised of a lecture and lab.

Assessment of Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½ Outcomes

First-Year Seminar learning goals are taken from the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) . The four learning goals—Foundations and Skills for Lifelong Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½, Civic Engagement, Information Literacy Skills, and Critical Thinking—are reflected in the approval criteria for new seminar courses. As part of the approval criteria, faculty are directed to develop course-specific learning outcomes that map to the reformatted First-Year Seminar category goals.

During the 2023-2024 academic year, FYS leadership developed a plan to assess the Critical Thinking component of FYS. The final report can be found below.

For questions about FYS, please contact Nicole Hager, Coordinator of First Year Seminar.