First-Year Experience
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First-Year Experience Links
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PNC’s First-Year Experience Pilot Program represents the best collaborative efforts of faculty, administration, and staff to provide resources for the success of first-year students, and introduce PNC’s General Education curriculum.
Information for Students and Parents
- FYE Overview
- What’s In the Course
- How It Counts
- Available Sections, Fall 2010
FYE Overview
What’s the difference between college and high school? Why do you still have to take courses outside of your major? What’s with all these letters—BABS, ECE, ECET, etc.? What’s the best way to take the courses I need and graduate quickly, and without much debt? How do I pick a major? How do I know my major works for me?
New college students have a lot of questions: the First-Year Experience (FYE) at PNC is designed to provide answers, to help students find their way around the university, get comfortable, and be successful here and beyond.
It’s also a “serious” course: you read challenging things, you write papers, you think, you talk in class. You are pressed to be an “active learner,” not simply take what’s served up to you. College is about that.
And it’s an “interdisciplinary” course. Instead of Sociology 100, or another introductory course with a name like “Biology” or “English” or “History” in front of it, you’re taking a course created by professors from different departments who have gotten together to teach. That means you get to see what those different fields offer, how different professors think and what they want from you as a university student.
Who’s the course for? First-years. All of them. Confident students will find plenty to chew on; less confident students receive plentiful support from the instructional staff. Your success is the point.
What’s in the Course
The course is as much about making connections between academics and the “real world” as it is about connecting different majors and departments. You will work in groups, and present to each other. You’ll hear community leaders speak, business professionals as well as experts on topics like health and finance. You will be asked to think about Hollywood comedies and serious, philosophical writing. You’ll discuss, write, and go out onto campus and into the community to investigate and ask questions.
Different sections will differ somewhat in content and style, but all sections have this in common:
Section I: Prosperity and Happiness
What do those two words mean to different people, mean at different times, mean to you? How do you get them? What difference does the local/national/global economic picture make? Materials: The Global Pool of Money, Better, No Impact Man
Section II: A Brief History of College
Where did this idea of college come from? Is it the same thing now it was 100 years ago? Do you get the same thing from PNC as you do from Ball State, or Harvard, or Ivy Tech? What’s the difference? Materials: Accepted, The Idea of a University, “Getting In”
Section III: Changing Times
How have gender roles and family structures changed in the last fifty years? What caused these changes? How do science and technology change society, and how are they likely to change it in the future? Materials: The God of Carnage, Genome, “The Invention of Air”
Special Guest Speaker: Victoria “Torie” Clarke, Monday, September 19
How does this course count?
The course counts for a general education credit in nursing, biology, ECET, Business, OLS, and HR, and any major within the College of Liberal Arts. It will transfer to a wide variety of other universities as a humanities/social sciences credit.
- In Biology the course replaces the current departmental first-year experience requirement, and substitutes for Sociology 100 or for Psychology 120 (one of the “Group B” Humanities and Social Sciences requirements).
- In Nursing, the course counts as a Humanities credit.
- In ECET, the course counts in place of ECET 196 (Exploring ECET).
- In majors within the College of Liberal Arts, the course will fulfill a general education requirement, substituting for Sociology 100 or for Psychology 120 (although you may still be required to take one of those courses as a specific degree requirement, e.g., for the BABS major).
- For the BS in Business, the course fulfills a Cultural/ Social/Behavioral elective; for the BS in Organizational Leadership and Supervision the course fulfills a Behavioral Sciences elective; for the BS in Human Resources it fulfills a General Education elective.
Available Sections, Fall 2011
Most sections are offered Monday, Wednesday from 1-1:15 p.m. One additional section is offered Tuesday, Thursday 12:30-1:45 p.m.
