FYS CRITERIA
Each FYS should fulfill the following five criteria:

1. Issue-oriented and advanced:  FYS might cover a wide range of knowledge, but they are not introductory surveys. FYS should engage issues and highlight advanced, cutting-edge topics.  An FYS cannot stipulate a prerequisite skill or course as a condition for enrollment.
    
2. Methodologically self-conscious: FYS focus on how scholars pose problems, discover solutions, resolve controversies, and evaluate knowledge. Most seminars introduce students to several modes of inquiry and fields of study.
    
3. Active learning: FYS encourage self-directed inquiry. This means enabling students to take responsibility for producing knowledge. Student participation in class and assignments should encourage original research and creative activities, and instructors might assign group as well as individual projects.
    
4. Communication: FYS aim to refine students’ communication skills; specifically, their ability to speak clearly and write persuasively. FYS often require students to develop some form of in-class presentation.
    
5. Multiple modes of assessment: Instructors are encouraged to use multiple testing strategies to accommodate students’ diverse learning styles and varied cognitive stages. For example, this might mean more frequent but shorter written assignments, as well as a variety in the types of verbal and non-verbal assessment. To encourage flexibility in modes of assessment, final exams are not required in FYS.

FYS AND GENERAL EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS:
Each FYS counts as 3 hours credit toward graduation, and may or may not count as credit toward a particular major. Like other courses, FYS may fulfill at most one Approach and possibly several Connections requirements.  Approaches and Connections are assigned to new courses by the Administrative Board, and instructors facilitate the process by providing the relevant information in their course syllabus.  The FYS Prospectus Form addresses specific information that is relevant for assigning Approaches and Connections, so it should be completed and attached to all new FYS submissions (see below).  For additional, definitive information about Approaches and Connections, see the Criteria for General Education Requirements:  Guidelines for the Submission and Review of Course Requirements.

WORKLOAD AND FINAL EXAMS:
FYS content is expected to focus on advanced, emergent, and stimulating topics; the FYS format is designed to allow students to work together with their professor and their classmates to attain a shared intellectual adventure; and FYS goals include not only imparting knowledge but also helping students refine their ability to speak clearly and to write persuasively. Given this complex mission, FYS instructors attempt to find a balanced work load that enables students to enjoy and to learn from their participation in the active process of intellectual discovery and creative accomplishment.  From this perspective, the FYS work load can be somewhat more intense than traditional courses, but students often lose track of their extra effort because the opportunity to participate in a genuine intellectual, scientific, or creative experience in the context of a small group of highly motivated peers can provide an invigorating breath of fresh air, presaging the scholarly excitement of upper-division courses for advanced majors.

In recognition of the uniqueness of the FYS format, UNC-Chapel Hill exempts FYS from requiring a mandatory final exam. This exemption, approved in December 2006, is described in the Criteria for General Education Requirements:  Guidelines for the Submission and Review of Course Requirements.  Many FYS have a considerable amount of instruction that takes place outside of the classroom, so an in-class final exam is not needed to meet the SACS/Carnegie contact-hour minimums.  Moreover, depending upon the activities and goals that characterize a particular FYS, an FYS instructor might identify some alternative form of final project as more appropriate for evaluation of student performance in lieu of a traditional final exam.  The bottom line is that the FYS format does not prevent instructors from administering a traditional in-class final exam, but other options are permissible.

LAUNCHING A NEW FYS:
There are two alternative strategies for launching a new FYS.  The straightforward method is to propose the new course using the same procedures that would be applied for any other newly proposed A&S courses.  That is, after the idea for the FYS has been discussed with the Departmental Chair or Director of Undergraduate Studies to explore feasibility and ascertain departmental commitment to offering the FYS if approved, the course would be entered in the Course Submission Inbox on Faculty-Staff Central.  The deadline for submission is September 15 for courses to be offered the following fall, and January 15 for courses to be offered the following spring. A syllabus should be attached to the submission with enough information to indicate that the course will meet the FYS criteria stated above and to allow the Administrative Boards to assign the course its appropriate General Education Requirement designations.  To help faculty who are proposing a new FYS provide the relevant information, we have prepared a FYS Prospectus Form that covers all of the relevant information.  Attaching the FYS Prospectus as part of the course submission facilitates the approval and cataloguing process.

If a new FYS has received departmental approval but timing precludes undergoing the official approval and cataloguing process, the course can be offered using the generic 089 course designation.  That is, most departments now list a course called “XXXX 089  First Year Seminar:  General Topics.”  This course designation can be used as the listing for any FYS that has received departmental approval, but a particular FYS can be offered in this form only once.  That is, if the particular FYS will be offered again, it must undergo the official approval and cataloguing process described in the previous paragraph. 

Departments can offer several sections of their 089 course to accommodate proposed courses that have not yet been formally approved and catalogued.  However, in order to assign these courses their appropriate one-time-only General Education designations, an FYS Prospectus Form must be submitted directly to the FYS Dean when the 089 is added to the course listings.  This also provides the FYS office with the information that is needed in order to publicize the course and thus attain appropriate enrollment.

REVISING AN FYS THAT IS ALREADY IN THE COURSE INVENTORY:
If the instructor makes significant changes to the syllabus, and particularly any changes that alter fulfillment of the FYS criteria stated above or that would have implications for the General Education Requirement flags that have been assigned, the course will be considered new and the approval process must be repeated.

CROSSLISTING:
The FYS program encourages interdisciplinary work, and instructors from two departments are welcome to co-teach an FYS. However, for departments that have an official FYS commitment, A&S will consider cross-listed courses as fulfilling only one FYS course. Thus, departments that offer cross-listed FYS courses should alternate the semester in which they receive credit for the FYS.

COURSE ENROLLMENT AND SCHEDULING:
Smaller class size provides a context in which faculty and students can work closely with one another on a common intellectual project. The typical FYS will enroll 20 students, but most FYS will be set initially at 21 students because it is likely that a few students will drop their FYS long after the deadline for adding the course. If there is a compelling reason to set the enrollment goal for a particular FYS at fewer than 20 students, the instructor should contact the FYS Dean to propose a limited enrollment. During drop-add, faculty may allow students to add their FYS via the web, or they may restrict additions to be "With Permission." Faculty should neither over-enroll the FYS nor allow the number of students to drop below the enrollment goal (unless the course has progressed so far into the semester that it is too late for new students to be integrated into the course).

Departmental scheduling officers set up class times and room assignments for FYS, and they are responsible for reserving a room that will accommodate the appropriate number of seats. FYS should be open to all first-year students, with the exception of Honors seminars, which are open to first-year Honors students at pre-registration and to the rest of first-year students subsequently, as space allows. To ensure frequent contact between the professor and the student, most FYS will meet at least twice a week, but it is possible to schedule an FYS into a once-a-week time slot.

STUDENT REGISTRATION:
Fall registration takes place during summer orientation (CTOPS), and spaces in FYS are reserved for each session, with enrollment caps adjusted session by session. Spring registration is online, with priority for first-year students who did not take an FYS.

FYS are intended primarily for first year students. Other students may enroll with the professor's permission, but only after classes have begun. First year students who took an FYS in the fall semester can enroll in a second seminar in the spring, provided there are seats still available.

COURSE EVALUATIONS:
We recommend that every FYS course be evaluated using the evaluation procedure administered by the Center for Teaching & Learning. This procedure follows guidelines established by the Task Force on Student Evaluation of Teaching: University of North Carolina. CTL's evaluation system generates reports that have been specialized for instructors, students, and the Associate Dean of First Year Seminars & Academic Experiences. FYS works closely with CTL to create evaluation forms and reports that are conducive to helping the FYS program and faculty fulfill its academic mission. If a course has unusually negative student evaluations, steps will be taken to use the evaluations as a basis for improving the course.

In addition to the course evaluations that are conducted at the end of the course, we also recommend the use of an early course evaluation form that has been prepared specifically for FYS by CTL and the FYS Dean.  These forms can be administered and analyzed by the FYS instructor, or they can be submitted to CTL, which will analyze the data and offer the instructor a professional consultation. 

PUBLICITY:
The FYS program uses multiple means to make information available to entering and enrolled students. Every summer each incoming student receives a detailed informational brochure on FYS included in her/his Orientation package. Brochures are also available in the Admissions and FYS Offices, and a pdf of the most recent brochure is available on this website. The FYS website also provides a list of current and upcoming FYS, which is updated regularly, so it is more accurate than the brochure. In addition students can find a separate listing of the upcoming semesters FYS in the Directory of Classes. The offices of Undergraduate Education and Academic Advising work in close collaboration with FYS. At CTOPS, during pre-registration and in general throughout the school year A&S academic advisors provide comprehensive and competent advice on FYS. FYS faculty are encouraged to collect images of FYS students in action and to share these images with the FYS Dean for use in the brochure and on this website.