US 101: FIRST YEAR SEMINAR
To graduate from MSU, every student is required to take a core University Seminar (US) course. University Studies offers approximately 45 sections of the US core course every year, each designed specifically for University Studies students.
In our seminar, US 101, a discussion-intensive format incorporating academic reading and writing encourages students to learn critical thinking skills as well as to explore issues that are important to their goals and objectives: academic success, educational and career planning, and the value of an education. Speaking assignments boost students' self-confidence and help them become college-level communicators of their ideas. 
Research has shown that First Year Seminar courses significantly enhance students' ability to succeed in college. The course is also designed to convey the excitement and possibilities of the learning experience at MSU.
Personalized interaction with faculty, staff, and fellow students will help you understand the responsibilities and rewards that are part of a university education.
Peers and Facilitators are an integral component of the Seminar.
If you would like more information about the course, please call or send us an e-mail.
Here is a brief overview and a list of readings for the new 2006-07 seminar curriculum:
A New Curriculum for
US 101US: UNIVERSITY STUDIES FIRST-YEAR SEMINAR
Beginning Fall 2006
The new 2006 curriculum has been designed as an opportunity 1) for reading and reflection, 2) for foundational inquiry and discussion, 3) for consideration and exploration of “modern” academic disciplines and the methods associated with them (primarily philosophy, history, cultural study, and sociology), and 4) for encounter with and inclusion in the academic community at Montana State University. Many of the particulars as to how such opportunities take shape are left to each instructor and their choices from selected reading lists. The two texts that we will all be reading in common are Epictetus’ Handbook and Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
Students will be reading 15-75 pages of material each week (depending on the instructor’s selections), and each instructor will be reading approximately 15 pages of writing from each student over the course of the semester.
One set of questions that will be driving our inquiry is this: Is there an academic experience common to all first-year students at MSU? If so, can we name and qualify it precisely? Does that quality tell us anything about this land-grant institution and its mission?
For a 15-week semester, our seminar now looks like this:
Weeks 1 & 2: What we talk about when we talk about Critical Thinking
Instructor’s choice readings (all available on e-reserve):
Plato, The Republic, Book VII, “Allegory of the Cave”
Woolf, “How Should One Read a Book?”
Sayers, “Lost Tools of Learning”
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, “Intellectual Virtues”
Gardner, selections from Multiple Intelligences
Markova, selections from The Open Mind
Emerson, “The American Scholar” or “Self-Reliance”
Carver, “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love”
Deloria, “American Indian Metaphysics”
Wildcat, “Indigenizing Education: Playing to Our Strengths.”
Week 3: What we talk about when we talk about Information Literacy
Required common reading:
http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/informationliteracycompetency.htm
Weeks 4 & 5: 21st Century Issues/Case Study #1: Rural Poverty
Instructor’s choice readings (all available on e-reserve):
Economist: “Surely not here?” (Montana as poorest state in the US)
Duncan, Rural Poverty in America
Weeks 6, 7, 8, 9: What we talk about when we talk about Academic Exploration
Instructor’s choice readings (all available on e-reserve):
Terkel, Working
Light, Making the Most of College
Florida, Rise of the Creative Class
Brecht, “About the Way to Construct Enduring Works,” “Speech to Danish Working-Class Actors on the Art of Observation”
Week 10 & 11: What we talk about when we talk about Identity and Community
Required common reading:
Epictetus’ Handbook (trans. by White)
Week 12 &13: 21st Century Issues/Case Study #2: Cobell v. Norton andMontana’s “Indian Education for All” Act
Instructor’s choice readings (all available on e-reserve):
www.indiantrust.com
http://data.opi.state.mt.us/bills/mca_toc/20_1_5.htm
Balibar and Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class
Benham and Stein, Renaissance of American Indian Higher Education
Huff, To Live Heroically
DeLoria, Custer Died for Your Sins
DeLoria, American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century
Mihesuah and Wilson, Indigenizing the Academy
Mihesuah, ed., Natives and Academics
Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks
Pevar, Rights of Indians and Tribes
Silko, Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit
Week 14 & 15: What we talk about when we talk about Meaning
Required common reading:
Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
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