The First-Year Experience offers an active, exciting way of understanding how to view a complex world and solve problems. You’ll immerse yourself in an interdisciplinary topic and you’ll connect with a faculty or staff mentor who shares your interest, ensuring you’ll have a support system in place as you start your journey along your personalized academic path at Furman. You’ll begin to develop a life of purpose that helps you determine how you can make an impact in your community and the world in which you live.
Choose between two different academic programs and take a class each semester with fellow students who live in your residence hall, so you are all learning together. Faculty and staff mentors will lead you through course content and design extracurricular activities that are relevant to your area of focus.
All classes meet a first-year writing seminar or general education requirement. The best thing about the First-Year Experience is that because our programs are interdisciplinary and not connected to specific majors at Furman, you do not have to consider declaring any specific major to join our community.
For example, you do not have to be considering Politics and International Affairs as a major to join the Politics and the Human Soul Community, only have an interest in exploring why we organize ourselves into political regimes and govern ourselves with laws. That gives you the chance to explore important topics, make some new friends with a diverse set of interests, and be encouraged and supported by faculty and staff mentors who will challenge you to grow as a student and as a citizen of the world.
