As part of the General Education Program, we are proud to offer all first-year students the opportunity to explore in depth academic topics selected by professors representing a variety of disciplines
Acclimating to RIC and Academia
These First-Year Seminars (FYS), limited to twenty students each, are designed to provide an introduction to the academic world and to our community, and to help students advance with confidence as Rhode Island College scholars.
FYS Summer 2025
Summer Session 1
FYS 100-01 T/Th 1-4 pm. Talkies and More: The Social Context of Cinema (Chaudhuri)
We look at how recent Hollywood films and their storytelling is relevant to an American way of life in 2024. Based on a select list of films, concepts including but not limited to race, gender, social class, crime and deviance, globalization (among other themes) will be addressed in this First Year Seminar. In the process we try to figure whether films are pure entertainment or a medium that plays an important role in how we perceive society.
FYS 100-02 MTWTh 1-3:10 pm. Leadership Study Through the Biography (with just a touch of fantasy) (Kunkel)
This course will look at the dimensions of leadership primarily through the study of biographies and biographical portraits. The class will explore the qualities of various leaders though online sources, print and media. For final projects, students will conduct research as well as read a biography of their choice and share portraits of their subject based on their original research.
Summer Session 2
FYS 100-20 MW 8-12:20 pm. Photovoice (Ender)
Photovoice is a ground-breaking approach to studying the communities around you. With Photovoice, different stories are told through the photographs taken. In this FYS, you will learn to take photographs as documents, engage in conversations with your peers, and ultimately, create a project that will help inform others about your topic.
FYS 100-21 MTW 8- 10:47 am Language and Gender (Basile) ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS
This course will explore the concept of gender as a social construct, and how men and women use language to reflect cultural expectations of masculinity and femininity. Students will analyze a variety of materials that illustrate how we perform our gendered identity through language, and provide a critical discussion of theories of this interdisciplinary field of study.
Fall 2025 First-Year Seminars (as of 04/28/2025)
FYS 100-02 T/Th 2-3:50 pm Bill Nye the Science Guy, Norman Lear, Sesame Street, Elementary Education and Me. (Galvez)
An exploration of how we learn, and what we learn through popular television and film. Students will discuss the impact of media on how and what we learn. Dominant themes associated with early childhood development, health communication, and social justice, as portrayed by popular media, will be examined.
FYS 100-03 MW 8–9:50 am Leadership Study Through the Biography (with just a touch of fantasy) (Kunkel)
This course will look at the dimensions of leadership primarily through the study of biographies and biographical portraits. The class will explore the qualities of various leaders though online sources, print and media. For final projects, students will conduct research as well as read a biography of their choice and share portraits of their subject based on their original research.
FYS 100-04 T/TH 8–9:50 am Technological Design and Innovation (McLaughlin)
Technology! We are surrounded by it, but do we understand it? Technology is one of the greatest liberating forces in human history. We are consumers of technology without equal, but we have a certain lack of knowledge about the materials and processes used to make the things we use on a daily basis. During this seminar, we will research historical technological design and innovations that make our lives better. The class activities will require us to explore the processes of innovation and invention, designing, prototyping, and building simple products. This course will contribute to our understanding of technology.
FYS 100-05 MW 6-7:50 pm Performance in First Person: This is Me! (Pennell)
You are a Primary Resource! Your life stories and experiences are unique, interesting and exciting. This class will explore a variety of methods of journaling, personal narrative/memoire writing and storytelling. It will also involve theatre exercises and methods for presentation. No text required.
FYS 100-06 MW 10-11:50 am Critical Issues in American Education (Kunkel)
This seminar provides an overview of critical issues in 21st century public school education policy. Current issues include: vouchers, gender, equity in school finance, reading, integration, affirmative action, critical thinking, multicultural education, national curriculum, values, business, testing, teacher empowerment, mainstreaming, academic freedom, unions, private schooling, and school violence.
FYS 100-07 T/Th 8-9:50 am Leaving a trail where there is no path: Anyone can lead! (Urda)
Leaders are mostly thought of as political and business heads. But everyone has the potential to lead, regardless of their official status. Anyone may benefit from learning what makes leaders effective and how they can do it, too. Leadership is used in captaining sports teams, presiding over student groups, running meetings, heading families, guiding religious followers, and teaching students. Topics include current leadership theories, personality, emotional intelligence, sources of power, ethical use of power and authority, and other managerial topics that have both personal and professional applications.
FYS100-08 M/W 2-3:50 pm. Yin and Yang: The Energy of Interconnectedness (Johnson)
How well do you know yourself? What are some ways to gain self-knowledge through the five elements (water, wood, fire, earth, and metal) and the three treasures (body, consciousness, and spirit)? We will practice sensing energy, or qi, and nourishing our interconnectedness with others and with nature for healing and relaxation. In this experiential course, we will learn about the polarities of yin and yang through movement and stillness. This will frame our exploration of what it means to be human—and a RIC college student--in this particular time and place.
FYS 100-09 T/Th 2-3:50 pm Black Cinema (Bery)
In this course we explore Black films across multiple genres, including narrative fiction, horror, Afrofuturism, comedy, musicals, and documentaries. Black Cinema explores Black life from multiple different perspectives. These cinematic representations foreground what is silenced and made invisible by dominant mainstream cinema. Through creativity and imagination Black films create new ways of seeing and knowing. Our weekly screenings, discussions and collaborative work will be guided by interviews with Black filmmakers, critical film reviews, and readings on the Black experience.
FYS 100-10 M/W 10-11:50 am Podcast Perspectives (Hewins)
Podcasting Perspectives examines the history, genres, and influence of podcasts, exploring their impact on society and how they at times blend truth and fiction. Student will work together to analyze diverse podcasts, reflect on ethical issues, discuss regulation and generate their own podcasts. Assignments foster critical thinking and creative engagement with this contemporary communication medium.
FYS 100-12 MW 10-11:50 am Make Music from Trash (Sumerlin)
Explore the sound potential of discarded objects or materials. Bang on a can? Strum a window blind? See what others are doing with junk that can sound like alternative music, and then find and make your own. No written music or experience required: only play by ear what your own instrument can do. Then join with your classmates in small groups and work out how to play together. The final is a concert.
FYS 100-13 M/W 2:00-3:50 pm Global Perspectives on Health (Pfeiffer)
Human experiences of health, illness, and disease are often taken for granted and assumed to be similar around the globe. However, ideas about and embodied experiences of health, illness, as well as explanations of causes and cures vary radically across geographical space and historical time. In this seminar, students will learn to think about the body, health, illness, disease, and healing in cross-cultural and global perspective. Drawing on course readings, lectures, discussions, films, active learning exercises, and writing assignments, students will explore the diverse range of contexts—cultural, geopolitical, historical, and socioeconomic—through which experiences of health, wellness, and bodily disarray are distinctly shaped and reshaped. We will also reflect on our own experiences, values, and assumptions about health and illness through a series of projects. In so doing we will consider “big questions” related to issues of health, illness, and healing in our own communities, countries, and our increasingly globalized world.
FYS 100-14 M/Th 12:00-1:50 pm. Doing Nothing (Benson)
There’s more to life than work. At the same time, most of us have internalized the value of constant productivity: when we’re not studying or working, we are scrolling, exercising, eating, shopping. We obsessively set goals, seek to accomplish things, and optimize ourselves – and when we are not, we often feel restless, bored, or even ashamed. Some of us even tether our self-worth to our productivity. This course will explore the alternative to productivity: doing nothing. What does it mean to do nothing? What are some different ways of doing nothing? How do we benefit from doing nothing? We will experience and reflect on anti-productive activities like meditation, wandering, birdwatching, drawing, playing, napping, loafing, and listening to music.
FYS 100-15 MW 10-11:50 pm Exploring the Cultural and Historical Evolution of Hip-Hop (Ender)
This FYS examines the historical development of hip-hop, from its origins in the South Bronx to its global influence, utilizing research-based methodologies to analyze its social, political, and artistic dimensions. Students will develop critical thinking skills through the examination of primary sources, including interviews with pioneering artists, archival recordings, and historical documents that contextualize hip-hop within broader movements in challenging social injustices. The course culminates in independent research projects, where students apply scholarly frameworks to analyze how hip-hop continues to function as both a cultural expression and a form of political commentary across diverse communities worldwide.
FYS 100-16 T/TH 10:00-11:50 pm. Coca-Cola, Culture and Globalization (Auger)
This seminar introduces students to the history of Coca Cola and its effect on national, international, and pop culture. Second only to ‘okay” as the most commonly understood word in the world, Coke’s brand has worldwide influence. Through film, Coca Cola’s website, and a textbook we will explore Coke’s responsiveness to changes in society from the patent medicine era to current concerns about the links between soft drinks and obesity.
FYS 100-17 MW 2–3:50 pm Language and Gender (Basile) ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS
This course will explore the concept of gender as a social construct, and how men and women use language to reflect cultural expectations of masculinity and femininity. Students will analyze a variety of materials that illustrate how we perform our gendered identity through language, and provide a critical discussion of theories of this interdisciplinary field of study.
FYS 100-18 T/FR 8:00-9:50 am Shock Therapy: Drama as Action (Abbotson)
Throughout history, rulers have viewed the communal opportunity offered by theater as a dangerous form of communication and have striven to censor anything perceived as threatening the social order. Students will explore socio-cultural boundaries enforced and broken by drama from the Greeks to contemporary works, as playwrights provoked attention toward a variety of inequities and wrongs. Protest drama is by its very nature shocking, but can it go too far, does it still work, and can we create some of our own? Requirements include active participation in discussion, class presentations, an independent research assignment, a short paper (3-5 pages) and a final group presentation.
FYS 100-19 MW 10-11:50 am It’s Not Easy Being Green (Gullapilli)
We’ve known about climate change and other environmental issues for decades now, yet both domestically and internationally there has been little movement in enacting changes to combat these concerns. In this class we explore reasons why change is difficult and the implications of some proposed solutions. We also turn to mitigating the impact of climate change and other environmental problems, seeking to understand how such problems affect different communities.
FYS 100-20 T/TH 10:00-11:50 am Waste Matters (Little)
In this course, we explore how the topic of waste and discard is linked to broader discussions of economy, ecology, consumption, globalization, toxicity, and sustainability. We explore an array of questions. What is waste? How do people talk about waste and discard? Who handles and manages our waste? How are waste workers perceived in our society? What does it mean to be a “throw away” culture? What are the global flows of waste? Finally, what does it mean to live in a wasted/wasteful world?
FYS 100-22 T/TH 2-3:50 pm Languages in U.S. Education: Whose Matter? (Papa)
Whose languages matter? Whose bilingualism is most valued? Meu bilinguismo é valorizado? Wird meine Zweisprachigkeit geschätzt?¿Se valora mi bilingüismo? 我的语言文化受到社会大众的认可吗？What is it like to be a bilingual student in U.S. schools and at RIC? Is speaking only English making us illiterate to the world? We will examine policies affecting bilingualism/multilingualism and language education and efforts by communities to maintain home languages. Additionally, we will investigate multilingualism locally, at RIC and our surrounding community, reflect on our own experiences, and develop proposals for community-led responses, using all languages of our community!
FYS 100-24 T/Th 2:00-3:50 pm Coca-Cola, Culture and Globalization (Auger)
This seminar introduces students to the history of Coca Cola and its effect on national, international, and pop culture. Second only to ‘okay” as the most commonly understood word in the world, Coke’s brand has worldwide influence. Through film, Coca Cola’s website, and a textbook we will explore Coke’s responsiveness to changes in society from the patent medicine era to current concerns about the links between soft drinks and obesity.
FYS 100-25 T/Th 10-11:50 What Our Zip Codes Can Inform us About Our Health (Soumyadeep Mukherjee)
How can we improve our collective health and be healthy as a population or a community? This course will focus on our physical environment, including the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the climate/weather patterns, the neighborhood, as well as our social, economic, cultural and political environments. We will discuss what being healthy means, and how conditions under which we live from our birth throughout life, impacts our health. We will explore case studies focusing on various determinants of health and relate that with our experiences. The course will also delve into how health can be improved by focusing on determinants.
FYS 100-26 T/Th 4:00-4:50 pm Learning Lifehacks: Learn How You Learn and Succeed (Lambert, S)
Are you a bit excited, nervous, or both about college? Are you interested in learning some tricks to succeeding in college, your upcoming career, and life in general? Whether you loved or hated school in the past, there are awesome strategies we can learn to improve our learning experiences, succeed in our classes, and enjoy our time in college. This is where Learning Lifehacks comes in. Each week, we tackle topics for learning about our own learning, such as how to avoid the habits that get in the way of our success and ways to create new habits for college success. The class involves performing contests and challenges to develop personalized and realistic habits for success in and outside of the classroom and reduce anxiety along the way.
FYS 100-27 T/Th 2:00-3:50 pm Humanity and the Machine: AI’s Evolution from the Silver Screen to the Classroom (Zornado)
This seminar introduces students to the history of Artificial Intelligence as represented in film and various media over the last century. Our work will explore how AI has been imagined, dreamed of, and warned about since it first appeared in movies almost one hundred years ago. We will also explore the practical applications of AI available today to consider the ongoing disruption it poses to our understanding of literacy, research, writing, and academic integrity. Students will practice evaluating AI generated information critically.
FYS 100-29 T/Th 10-11:50 What our zip codes can inform us about our health? (Mukherjee)
It does not sound fair that where we live will impact how long we live, right? Yet, that is the reality. This course will focus on how health is shaped by our physical environment, including the air we breathe in, the water we drink, the food we eat, the climate/weather patterns, the neighborhood, as well as our social, economic, cultural and political environments. We will discuss what being healthy means, and how health is determined by conditions under which we live from our birth throughout life. We will explore case studies and relate with our experiences. The course will also seek answers to: How can we improve our collective health and be healthy as a population or a community?
FYS 100-30 T/Th 10-11:50 Leadership Study Through the Biography (with just a touch of fantasy) (Kunkel)
This course will look at the dimensions of leadership primarily through the study of biographies and biographical portraits. The class will explore the qualities of various leaders though online sources, print and media. For final projects, students will conduct research as well as read a biography of their choice and share portraits of their subject based on their original research.
