Through the general education program at Plymouth State University, you will develop “habits of mind” that contribute to your long-term well-being and success. As the first course in the general education program, the First Year Seminar (FYS) provides the foundation for your learning throughout the program. In the FYS, you will learn about a “wicked problem” and work on a project that will address some aspect of the problem. By engaging in this work, you will meet the goals of the course. In particular, by the end of the course, you will:

1. Understand the purpose of general education and make connections between general education and major coursework.
2. Understand and engage interdisciplinary thinking, integrative learning, and integrated clusters.
3. Understand and apply various methods of inquiry including critical thinking and design thinking.
4. Engage problem-based learning by exploring challenges/problems/questions from interdisciplinary perspectives.
5. Engage collaborative learning in open laboratory spaces.
6. Become skilled in Information Fluency, exploring the sources of evidence, evaluating different kinds of evidence, and drawing relevant conclusions from the evidence.

The faculty who teach the FYS have developed this book to support the class. The readings are organized around the six goals of the course and represent a mix of materials gathered from other sources along with materials created specifically for this course.