This semester marks the end of the First Year Seminar at St. Joe’s.
The 33 sections of classes with course number 150 being taught this semester, with topics including Sex, Drug & Rock n Roll in IR; Restorative Justice; to Race and Sport in America; to Ripped from the Headlines News — represent the end of an era after the seminar was voted out of the new Cornerstone Core Curriculum (CCC).
St. Joe’s faculty voted in 2023 to approve the new general education requirements, which will go into effect with the class of 2029 in fall 2025.
The General Education Program (GEP) was too big and wasn’t adequately meeting the needs of students in certain academic programs, including those gained in the mergers with University of the Sciences and Pennsylvania College of Health Sciences, said Jim Boettcher, Ph.D., professor of philosophy, chair of of the General Education Program Oversight Committee and co-chair of the The Core Curriculum Reform Task Force (CCRTF).
A 2021 program review report highlighted areas where the GEP could be improved, including the First Year Seminar course. Core components of the course, like library and information literacy and oral communication, “were not being evenly realized across all sections,” Boettcher said.
“It would often serve the narrower focus of recruiting students into specific majors, rather than its original purpose, which was to introduce students to the life of the academy, to research, to thinking, to writing across disciplines,” Boettcher said.
That wasn’t the case for Nancy Fox, Ph.D., professor of economics, who said that teaching her First Year Seminar course was one of the greatest experiences she has had in 39 years at St. Joe’s. Fox said students of all majors took her First Year Seminar, and that aspect was an advantage of the course.
“They get to be with people who are not in their major,” Fox said. “They get to consider topics that they might not otherwise think about.”
Charles Huber ’26, a finance major, had Fox as his First Year Seminar instructor.
“As an overall experience, I would say it was honestly a highlight in terms of the classes I’ve taken at St. Joe’s,” Huber said.
Huber said the removal of the course in the new curriculum was “surprising but not unwarranted.”
“I don’t necessarily feel negatively or positively towards it, it just kind of is what it is,” Huber said. “They’re trying out something different.”
Long-time instructors of the classes saw other benefits of the courses. Jeffrey Hyson, Ph.D., assistant professor of history, who has been teaching First Year Seminar classes since 2010, said small class sizes — typically no more than 20 students — fostered a close connection among students and between students and faculty, important components of students’ first year experiences.
“I do know for a lot of students, that first year, especially that first semester of college, one of the many challenges is finding your people,” Hyson said. “Just meeting people who share your interests or whose personalities you enjoy, and it’s harder to do that in larger classes than it is in a First Year Seminar.”
Martha Easton, Ph.D., associate professor of art history, also acknowledged the role the course played in the First Year Experience program, which is intended “to create a sense of belonging for all first year students.” At the start of the fall 2025 semester, there will no longer be an academic course associated with the program, which includes multiple early arrival programs, orientation and other events.
“Now, there’s no designated course where they can learn how to go to college,” Easton said. “So, I think that’s a disadvantage.”
First Year Seminar instructors had the ability to plan events and excursions to supplement the academic component of the course. Instructors were allotted $18 per student. Activities included guest speakers, trips and food, all of which served the greater purpose of enhancing the class experience, Nancy Komada, director of student transitions, said.
Ken Weidner, Ph.D., assistant professor of management, utilized this aspect of the course and took his class to a local mosque.
Some instructors designed their First Year Seminar from scratch. Weidner taught Serious Comedy and Social Justice, in which students read academic sources alongside watching comedies as a way to discuss topics that may otherwise be uncomfortable. By the end of the course, students were able to see “how corrosive and destructive social dominance of one group by another can be,” Weidner said.
Weidner said he will miss his course but understands the change.
“We needed to do that for the good of the university, to meet the needs of all of our students,” Weidner said.
Weidner said some instructors may reshape their First Year Seminar courses into another course offering. Fox is one example. In fall 2025, Fox said she will be teaching “Ripped from the Headlines: Economics in the News” as an upper-level economics elective course.
Students in the outgoing GEP curriculum must take an alternative theology, religion or philosophy course to replace the First Year Seminar, if they have not yet taken it, as per the GEP Policies & Procedures.