Considering Your First-Year Seminar

One of the signature elements of the McDaniel Plan, your First Year Seminar will challenge and excite you. First Year Seminars are innovative topical and thematic courses that provide an introduction to the liberal arts and an academic transition to college. Although you won’t pick exactly which seminar you are enrolled in, you do get to list your preferences.

Listed below is a description of each Seminar course available. Once you’re done reviewing the descriptions, you’ll complete the First Year Seminar Rating Form, found in your admissions portal. Advisors will then match each student with a seminar of interest. While we’ll do our best to place you in your 1st, 2nd or 3rd choice First Year Seminar, you can be placed in any one of the courses you select.

For students admitted to the Nursing program, you will be placed in the FYS course "EaRNing Your Nursing Degree".

Acting on Stage and Off Professor Gene Fouche, Theatre

An introduction to acting combining practical exercises with study of contemporary texts on acting. Emphasis is placed on scene analysis and scene work, as well as written exercises in performance analysis and acting theory.

America's Game Baseball Professor of Kinesiology, Jennifer McKenzie

This course will investigate the colorful history of baseball: the origins and evolution of the game, the professionalism that grew out of it, and the big business that was built upon it. McDaniel Plan: First-Year Seminar

Art on the Edge Associate Professor of Art, Chloe Irla

Art exists alongside every field of study and offers a powerful lens for understanding the world. This hands-on First-Year Seminar explores art as something we make, question, and experience in everyday life. Through individual and collaborative creative projects, discussion and formal analysis, personal reflection, research, and real-world encounters on and off campus, students will examine how art helps us explore concepts such as identity, history, science, technology, and community. No prior art experience is required - just curiosity, openness, and a willingness to experiment at the edge of what art can be. McDaniel Plan: First Year Seminar; Creative Expression

Being a Changemaker Professor Jim Kunz, Social Work

Are you interested in becoming a social worker, learning what social work is about, or how you can bring about change to improve the lives of others? In this class, you’ll learn what social workers do and the values, ethics, and theories that guide their work. You’ll have a chance to meet social workers and others who work to bring about change. And you’ll engage in experiential learning, by addressing food insecurity on campus and beyond. Whether you plan to be a social worker or want to be a Changemaker, this is the course for you!

Being Community Professor Richard Smith, AVP for Institutional Mission & Belonging, College Chaplain

We live in a time marked by deep social, political, and cultural division, yet college offers an opportunity to learn new ways of living and learning together. This interactive seminar invites students to explore how community is formed through dialogue, reflection, shared experiences, and engagement across difference, while examining questions of identity, values, meaning, and belonging. Students will serve as collaborators in shaping initiatives for the Center for Dialogue and Expression, helping design programs and practices that foster connection, understanding, and community across campus. McDaniel Plan: First-year Seminar

Breaking Barriers: Pop Culture Senior Lecturer, Carol Zaru

Students will explore how social media revolutionized communication in the Arab world and fueled a social justice movement that challenged the fabric of society and produced a vibrant space for artists and creators across industries. From the first openly LGBTQ musician in the Arab world, to the comedian who was imprisoned for speaking out against an authoritative regime - pop culture pioneers are redefining political protest and leading a movement that is making waves in the Arab world and beyond. McDaniel Plan: First Year Seminar

Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate Professor Mohamed Esa, World Languages, Literatures & Cultures

What is your favorite beverage? Is it coffee, tea or perhaps chocolate? Sweetened or unsweetened? Hot or cold? The course examines the history of these beverages, their nutritional and health content, their cultural significance, and the various methods of production, preparation and consumption. In addition, we will explore the cultural, economic, and geopolitical roles of coffee, tea, chocolate, and sugar in world history. Special attention will also be paid to how the introduction of coffee, tea, chocolate, and sugar led to colonial expansion, created empires and transformed global trading networks with sales and profits in the 100's of billions per year, with most of the sales and consumption are in industrialized nations while they are cultivated, harvested and exported by the world's poorest nations. If one of the 3 drinks is your favorite, then this course is for you. Come, taste and enjoy these invigorating beverages while you expand your knowledge about other topics such as Fair Trade, Fair for Life, Rainforest Alliance Certified, coffeehouses, tea ceremonies and the fascinating story of chocolate, "the food of the gods." McDaniel Plan: First Year Seminar; International Nonwestern

Comics & Graphic Novels Associate Professor of English, Kate Dobson

Are graphic novels literature or art? Answer: Yes, both! What they are not: just for kids. Today's graphic novels and manga tell serious-and seriously fun-stories that deserve space in any course on contemporary literature. In fact, the medium is sophisticated enough to present rich adaptations of literary classics and to produce compelling stories for TV, animation, and live action films. We will study some of those adaptations in this course, but our main focus is the printed medium. What happens when comics artists create autobiography, journalism, sci-fi, and dystopian fiction in comics form? Are the capes and masks and flashy colors all gone? And what role to the pictures have in the ways we analyze narratives? Among other topics, we will see how the drawn body becomes a language of intersecting spiritual, ethnic, racial, gender, and sexual identities. (Some books address mature themes.) As a bonus: Although like any literature course we focus mainly on text analysis, some projects can be tackled through comics-creating . no super art skills required! Students are not required to subscribe to ComiXology (an Amazon company), but some will find this to be a good way to access texts. McDaniel Plan: First Year Seminar; Creative Expression

EaRNing Your Nursing Degree Professor Jennifer Ort, Nursing

This course is designed to help students gain knowledge of McDaniel College. Students will meet others with similar interests as well as connect with faculty and advisors. Campus resources, personal learning styles, personal goals and critical thinking abilities to promote student success will be explored. Through activities, application, and reflection, the material covered in this course will introduce the profession of nursing, career opportunities, and concepts related to social determinants of health. This course will also introduce students to mathematical calculations in the context of medication administration.

Finding Your Voice Professor Hillary Cooper

Communication shapes how we learn, access healthcare, build relationships, and participate in society. This seminar explores how communication influences identity, health, and opportunity, and how barriers related to disability, culture, neurodiversity, and social determinants of health can affect being heard and understood. Through discussion, case studies, and interactive activities, students will examine communication across different settings and explore the systems, professions, and strategies that help support communication access and participation in society. McDaniel Plan: First-year Seminar

Funny Business Professor of English, Robert Kachur

What makes something we read or watch funny? Humor is an essential part of human experience, but how does it work? These questions will drive this first-year seminar. We will:

Read, watch and listen to a lot of funny material
Learn from comedy pros about humor writing’s forms and techniques
Discuss cognitive psychologists’ research on what makes people laugh, as well as the tremendous impact that humor has on us
Analyze the particular messages—aka the “subtexts”—that pieces of comedy convey

After lots of reading and watching and asking, we’ll apply what we’re learning by writing some short humor pieces of our own. Our raw material will be what we observe in our own lives: our relationships with other people, animals, and institutions; the activities fill up our time and the time of people we know; the vast range of emotions, desires and fears we feel and encounter in others; the experiences of our own bodies; the immediate physical and social environments we negotiate; and larger cultural happenings.

Gender, Literature, Culture Professor of English, Becky Carpenter

Be a man! That’s not very ladylike! We’ve all heard statements like these, but what do they really mean? What is “masculinity,” what is “femininity,” and how have these concepts changed over time? This course will examine the social construction of masculinity and femininity over the last century or so. We will read literature and examine cultural artifacts from early twentieth century Boy Scout manuals to contemporary magazine advertisements, and from a sex manual to popular movies and books in an attempt to chart some of the changes in the social construction of gender over the course of the twentieth century. How much have things changed? Have books, movies, television, and advertisements helped advance new gender roles, or have they reinforced traditional ones?

More Doing, More Living Associate Professor of Occupational Therapy, Rachel Guilfoyle

Discover the power of movement-from running, walking, CrossFit, yoga, dancing, to engaging in play! This first-year seminar engages students in exploring how people of all ages and abilities stay strong, capable, and fully engaged in life. Through the lens of occupational therapy, students will investigate the physical, psychological, and social dimensions of movement and occupation across the lifespan-from childhood to older adulthood-analyzing how movement promotes independence, identity, and overall quality of life. Movement is medicine-let's move! McDaniel Plan: First-year Seminar

Musical Ecstasies Associate Professor of English, Corey Wronski

Many of us are moved by music, which can carry us back to memories, heal our broken hearts, and uplift our spirits. But how and why does music do this? What gives it the capacity to speak to and express our interior lives? This course will explore these questions as we examine the connection between music and transcendent experience. Vocabulary from philosophy and religious traditions will provide a language for the way that music can move us, and we will then turn our focus to our own relationships with music and to how popular music functions in contemporary American culture. In that context, popular music has often been portrayed as a channel for profound personal experience - spiritual, romantic, restorative, redemptive, and more. We will explore these dynamics as we analyze popular music from the 20th-21st centuries and the ways it features in culture. The final project will involve a deep dive into the work of a musical artist of your choice. Ultimately, we will ask the question of what it means for music to drive forms of ecstasy in the original Greek sense of "ek-stasis," to "stand outside oneself," both throughout history and for us today. McDaniel Plan: First-year Seminar; Creative Expression

Nature's Fury Or Media Frenzy Professor Ben Smith, Mathematics

This course explores natural hazards, both modern and historical, and their effect on humanity. The course seeks to provide students with an accurate data-driven framework for understanding catastrophes of a non-human origin while contrasting scientific and popular media accounts of these disasters. Investigates geologic, hydrologic, astronomical, and biological hazards and their impact on society; will contrast quantitative and qualitative reports, including government data, accounts in popular media, and scientific sources. The course culminates in a research project on a particular disaster.

Philosophy and Pop Culture Assistant Professor, Shaeeda Mensah

Socrates is well known for the assertion that an "unexamined life is not worth living for a human being." Keeping this is mind, we will critically examine the ways in which philosophical ideas have been taken up and explored in popular (or mass) culture. We will give particular attention the ways that philosophical topics like the good life, justice, punishment, morality, truth, and knowledge are considered in music, television, novels, movies, and social media. Additionally, we will ask explore questions such as 'what is pop culture?, ' 'what purpose does pop culture serve?', and 'what impact does pop culture have on our contemporary society?.' McDaniel Plan: First Year Seminar

Putin's Russia: Past and Present Professor Jakub Zejmis, History and Art History

Russian president Vladimir Putin is often in the news as he asserts his country’s power. This course will address Putin’s foreign policy in historical perspective as he has intervened in Ukraine and Syria, opposed NATO expansion, forged a Eurasian Economic Union, and meddled in American elections. The course will also examine Russia’s political system, economy, society and culture as they have developed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Overall, Russia’s place in the world will be considered in light of the centuries old debate over Russia’s identity as a Slavic and multi-ethnic state situated on the crossroads between Europe and Asia.

Rebels in Early America Associate Professor of History, Stephen Feeley

This course examines rebellion and dissent in early America, with particular attention to two important episodes: 1) the trial of Anne Hutchinson by New England Puritans for her radical views on women and salvation; 2) the coming of the American Revolution to the streets of New York City. Rather than merely investigating events, students will have the opportunity to assume the roles of actual historical figures, mastering the issues of the day, debating from their point of view, and ultimately swaying the course of history. In addition to learning about early America, students will gain writing, research, and rhetorical skills necessary to prosper in college in beyond. 

Running for your Life Professor Lisa Lebo, Associate Director of First Year Programs

Did you know that regular running strengthens your immune system, improves your mood, and boosts your confidence? It’s true! Running is a sport that doesn’t require fancy equipment or a gym membership; the only things you need are a good pair of running shoes and the open road. Led by an RRCA-certified running coach, we will learn about the physical and mental benefits of this powerful cardio exercise. Through a variety of books, articles, essays, scientific studies, movies, and guest speakers, students will be inspired to run for their lives. (The average runner lives three years longer than the non-runner!). This is an active class where students will be running, jogging, and walking—all in preparation for a local 5K.

Take It to the Streets! Professor Pam Zappardino, Zepp Center for Nonviolence and Peace Education

Finding your voice, making change, and building a movement are increasingly important as we look toward the future. But how do we do it?  And more importantly, how do we do it effectively? What works and what doesn’t?  Research shows that nonviolence is the most successful strategy. Does that surprise you? Let’s talk about what nonviolence really means, why it is so successful, and how you can use it to amplify your voice, work for social change and bring others to your cause. We’ll have a good time unearthing some real creativity along the way as we figure out how to make change happen.

The Nature of Science Professor of Physics, Jeff Marx

Science courses generally are designed to introduce students to what scientists know. The focus of this course, however, will be to deepen students appreciation of what science is and how scientists know what they know. Through activities designed to stimulate creative and logical thinking skills, and discussions centered on interactions between science and society, students will gain a clearer understanding of the scientific endeavor, while exploring and expanding their own scientific skills. McDaniel Plan: First-Year Seminar, Scientific Inquiry with Embedded Lab

Theatre Appreciation Assistant Professor of Theatre, Shana Joslyn

An introduction to the analysis and appreciation of theatre, the student receives an overview of dramatic theory and practice by reading and attending plays, studying critical evaluations of professionals, and participating in classroom discussions. Course work consists of creative theatrical projects tied into each module. Examples include: Greek mask design, publicity poster creation, a costume/set design focused research project and collaborating, writing, and acting in your own 5-min play!

The Women of Harry Potter Assistant Dean of Education, Tracey Lucas

Are you a Harry Potter fan? Those of us that are Potter fans love Harry, however, Harry's success in defeating Voldemort is scaffold by a supporting cast of characters. The female characters in the Harry Potter books and movies provide the foundation, motivation and in some cases, the sense of family all of which are essential for Harry to persevere. The course will also explore the background of the female author, JK Rowling and how her perspective influenced the development of the female characters. Discussion will focus on questions such as: What role does each character play in molding Harry's core values? How do the female characters who are nemeses to Harry actually make him stronger and more effective as a hero? We will unpack the influence of main characters such as Hermione, Ginny, and Mrs. Weasley as well as a few of the minor characters like Mrs. Figg and Professor Trelawney. McDaniel Plan: First Year Seminar

Unseen Math in Puzzles and Games Professor Michele Gribben, Mathematics

Do you like to solve puzzles and play board games? This is a hands-on, active-learning style course where we will play games and solve puzzles and along the way discover interesting ideas in mathematics. Students will be introduced to elementary ideas in college mathematics by looking for patterns. The mathematics in this course is designed to be accessible to all incoming students. Topics we explore will include an introduction to graph theory, topology, and probability.

Finished reviewing them all?

Good job! Now it’s time to pick your favorites.

Grab some paper and a pen.
Write down your top First Year Seminar of Interest.
Make a list of your five First Year Seminar alternatives. (These are five additional seminars that sparked your interest and you’d love to take.)
Now you’re ready to complete your First Year Seminar Rating Form.

First-Year Seminar Rating Form