This first-year seminar helps students decode the unwritten rules of college at UMass Amherst. Through interactive discussion and reflection, students will build practical strategies for academic success, develop meaningful campus connections, and create sustainable habits that support both achievement and wellbeing. The course demystifies college systems, introduces key campus resources, and empowers students to confidently navigate their first year and beyond.

Tainos, inhabitants of Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas, were the first Native American people to experience, as well as resist, European colonization beginning in 1492 and continuing to this day. Yet many of us were taught that Tainos became extinct. In this introduction to Taino survival and continuance, we will look at how knowledge about Taino culture thrived but was also threatened by violence, the myth of extinction, and ?paper genocide.?

Many writers work hard to craft a distinctive voice. But what happens to voice in an age of generative AI? In this course, we will consider how technologies of writing have intersected with the politics of language in the past. Then we will examine how generative AI is impacting language today, experimenting with different AI tools to better understand what they can - and can?t - do for us as writers. Along the way, we?ll have opportunities to play with our own writing and learn about campus resources that support student writers.

In this course, students will learn about different mechanisms used within board games, design philosophies taken up by various designers, and the process of creating a board game. By the end of the course, students will have created and playtested their own small game. In addition to studying board game design, this course will also introduce students to resources and events across campus as well as skills to approach college in the first year and beyond.

This course will primarily be about our relationships to movies. More specifically, it will focus on how we watch, talk about, form connections through, and think about cinema. Rather than treat them as a form of passive entertainment, we will discuss how films can be a generative space where we form community, process our thoughts and ideas, and learn about ourselves and the world.

In this course, we will demystify the complexities of climate change and build a community that is justice-oriented and climate-informed. To generate research questions focused on sustainability, we will visit seed libraries and mineral galleries, art exhibitions and archives, all on the grounds of the UMass Amherst campus. As we familiarize ourselves with our university, we will also read groundbreaking literary texts, watch award-winning documentary films, and practice environmental blogging.

This course introduces students to a selection of stories from around the world which can be described as Campus Stories. The seminar forms a community of students engaging with each other through a lively weekly discussion of a short story or an extract from a longer work. The course encourages the practice of "slow reading" which encourages students to develop their own close reading of text, a skill applicable to any course of study. Discussions will focus on why the campus is an appealing setting for writers of mystery, romance, psychological, and other genres.

Each week, this First Year Seminar will tackle one short story. We will explore some of the most celebrated stories of U.S. literature and some under-studied gems. We will pay special attention to the historical, cultural, and political circumstances that underwrote the creation of these tales and sharpen our skills of literary analysis and collaborative class discussions. We'll also try our hand at some scene and story composition with in-class writing exercises.

The 19th century pseudoscience of eugenics, the idea that selective breeding was a way to better humanity as a whole, captured the imagination of radicals and conservatives alike. At its core lay a utopian ideal: populations could be improved by encouraging reproduction from some and discouraging it from others. Unsurprisingly, however, this meant that those labeled as unfit because of their ability, race, class, and sexuality were targeted for elimination.

This First Year Seminar offers students a chance to exercise both body and mind as we work together to master the basics of a 5K race, and, at the same time, the UMass campus. Running will start after our first class, with students divided into training groups. (These will change halfway through the term.) Over the subsequent 13 weeks, students will run with their classmates with the overall goal of improving their fitness. Homework will consist of regular runs each week with classmates.