The Freshman Seminar Program was created to ensure that incoming freshmen would have opportunities to work closely with distinguished faculty members, who might inspire them to more ambitious conceptions of their college careers.

Students learn the excitement of intellectual inquiry by participating once a week for ten or eleven weeks in a two-hour seminar on a topic of personal interest both to the seminar leader who has chosen to offer the topic and to the students who have elected to enroll. Each seminar is limited to eighteen freshmen, who earn two units of elective credit on a CREDIT / NO CREDIT basis. While the workload is less than a regular four-unit course, journals, papers, group projects, or individual presentations are often required in addition to the reading and participation in seminar discussions.

Freshman Seminar topics may range beyond the limits of the regular curriculum. Past topics include political cartooning, the Internet, Israel, the sixties, suicide, fascism, psychoanalysis, ecological issues, the arts,sensual science, science fiction, issues in law and medicine, international terrorism, the post-Communist landscape, and the value of a college education.

Freshman Seminars are offered both in the Fall and Spring terms. Brochures are distributed at the Fall Orientation sessions and in Freshman Writing classes for the Spring term; class information is printed also in the Schedule of Classes under "Freshman Seminars." Freshman may earn credit for two different topics, one in the Fall and another in the Spring of their freshman year. By doing so, incoming students learn how to study in a seminar setting, acquire the expectations of academic culture, and meet a group of other freshmen who take their educations seriously.
 
View Freshman Seminars offered in Fall 2013.

Contact Us

inds@usc.edu
3454 Trousdale Parkway, Room 200
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0153
(213) 740-2961