LIFE AT DRAKE
First-Year Experience
At Drake, learning goes beyond papers, tests and reading assignments. It’s about making connections, discovering new ideas and occasionally entering into a healthy debate.
That’s why we developed the First Year Seminar (FYS) to help you connect with your classmates and introduce you to what a Drake education is really about.
Courses
You’ll be enrolled in an FYS as part of your first semester schedule. Each FYS class is taught around a specific theme. At first, many of these may seem a bit unusual — the topics are often things you wouldn’t expect to learn about in a college course. Your FYS can be related to your major, or it can be a chance to explore another area of interest. Below are just a few examples of themes for this year, but you'll be able to choose from nearly 50 options.
- A Better World: Is there an App for that?
- Running: Body, Mind, Sole
- Political Scandals
- From Lysistrata to Laramie: 2500 Years of Theatre as a Force of Social Change
- The Hipster: A Culture History of Cool
- Lost! (and Found)
- Physics for Future Presidents
- Coming of Age in Cinema
Living and Learning
The FYS courses are designed as living and learning communities. In addition to class, you’ll go through Welcome Weekend with the other students in your FYS and participate in other organized activities with them and your professor. For example, some classes compete in capture the flag tournaments, visit the Drake Diner or have movie nights together. You’ll also live in the same building — often on the same floor — as your FYS classmates.
At Drake, we believe the friendships you make with students and faculty are just as important as the information you’ll learn and skills you will gain in your classes. Your FYS is the first step in developing connections that will last a lifetime.
