First Year Experience

“He said to me once that one could never know anything except through desire, real desire…a longing for everything that was not in oneself…that carried one beyond the limits of one’s mind to other times and other places, and even, if one were lucky, to a place where there was no border between oneself and one’s image in the mirror.”

These lines come from The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh, the 2008 summer reading for new Franklin students, which speaks to the kinds of questions that bring a student to Franklin College. What does it mean when people of different cultures come together? Under what conditions do they enrich each other and when do such meetings feel more like collisions than fruitful encounters? How are geographical, economic, and political borders redrawn, maintained, or dissolved in our ever-changing global world? How does personal experience color and influence our understanding of borders and border crossings? What does it mean to travel?

The First Year Experience at Franklin College is an integrated mix of programs from all over the College intended to assist students in making the transition from their secondary school to university life, while beginning to answer many of the questions posed above. All new first-year students participate in Crossing Borders, the First-Year Experience. Crossing Borders introduces students to FranklinCollege. The program represents the foundation of our liberal arts experience, emphasizing our multi-cultural and international academic learning environment. First Year Experience includes the following components:

New Student Orientation
Each year New Student Orientation offers an introduction to campus resources and to Lugano. Activities span the week prior to classes and culminate with the traditional trip to Valle Verzasca. For more information, please see Orientation.

First Year Seminars
First Year Seminars are semester-long, three-credit courses taught in a particular academic discipline. The First Year Seminars reflect the specific research interests of the Franklin faculty. Each new student enrolls in a seminar that corresponds to their own area of interest. Fall 2008 topics include: Renaissance Venice, Business Ethics, Travel Writing, The Road Movie, Climate Change, Story Telling, Game Theory, History of Tourism, Intercultural Communications, Italian Studies, and Sustainable Development. The common theme of border crossings links each seminar. Each seminar features an academic mentor, an upper-division student selected to work closely with both students and the professor.

Co-curricular Activities
Ogni Giorno is a program of co-curricular activities for the entire campus community that includes an event scheduled every day, or ogni giorno, until the start of Academic Travel in October. These events extend the orientation period and range from the cerebral to the experiential. The 2008 schedule includes visits to local festivals, movies, hikes, lectures, and the annual road rally.

Residential Life Programming
Through this program selected upper-division students known as Peer Mentors create programs in collaboration with dedicated Resident Assistants aimed at fostering intercultural and social development in the first year.

Academic Advising
Each student will be assigned an Academic Advisor, a full-time faculty member who will assist the student in developing plans in tune with his or her personal academic, career, and life goals. Normally, your Academic Advisor is also your First Year Seminar professor.

Academic Support Services
Research assignments included in the First Year Seminars will accustom the student to using the library, IT services, and the Writing Center.

Academic Mentors
The First Year Experience provides academic assistance for first year students, while allowing an opportunity for upper-division students to develop their teaching and leadership skills. Academic Mentors work together under the coordination of the Director of the Writing and Learning Center with their individual classes.