First-Year Writing Seminars

The First-Year Writing Seminar Program is designed to help introduce students to what it means to undertake serious intellectual work at the college level.

First-year seminar classroom — First-Year Writing Seminar on "International Perspectives"

The seminars provide small class settings where students can engage with a particular topic, a professor, and their peers.

Each fall, Bowdoin offers over thirty-five first-year writing seminars on topics that traverse the Bowdoin curriculum. Students choose and register for seminars during orientation in conversation with their faculty advisor. The seminars provide an opportunity for in-depth study of a subject of mutual interest, as well as a place to develop college-level skills of critical thinking, reading, writing, and research. All first-year writing seminars involve frequent writing practice, individualized feedback on writing, and an assignment structure that teaches students how to draft and revise.

Additionally, the seminars provide both an introduction to library research and an overview of the expectations of academic honesty and citing sources. This opportunity to learn and practice academic writing is both an independent goal of first-year seminars and an additional means through which faculty can introduce their discipline and help students to engage with a particular subject.

For faculty teaching first-year writing seminars, John Paul Kanwit provides workshops and individual consultations (contact j.kanwit@bowdoin.edu). These faculty also have access to the First-Year Writing Seminar Canvas course, which contains sample syllabi and assignments as well as strategies for giving feedback, handling the paper load, grading, and designing assignments for an AI world.