FYEP Requirements

What It Takes

The First-Year Experience is a sequence of courses designed to help you develop the skills necessary to be a successful college student and a thoughtful, engaged and caring member of society. First-Year classes assist with the transition to college academics and create small learning communities that support you academically and personally. First-Year Experience is structured to provide you with an engaging learning environment.

FYEP 101: The First-Year Writing Seminar

FYEP 101 Seminars are required of all First-Year students. These classes help you learn the skills necessary to be a better writer, researcher, and critical thinker in college. No single course can teach you how to write well — it is a skill that you will spend your college career developing. Your First-Year Writing Seminar will provide you with a solid foundation for your future by teaching you to approach writing in a unique way – as a process of exploring and articulating ideas.

January Term

All First-Year students are required to enroll in a four-credit course during J-Term —  a one-month term characterized by distinctive learning experiences. The first-year J-Term provides opportunities to experience the very best of PLU: experiential learning; intensive classes; co-curricular programs.

FYEP 102: The Discipline-Based DJS Seminar

FYEP 102 seminars, specially designed for First-Year students, call on students to engage with themes and questions related to Diversity, Justice, and Sustainability, three institutional priorities for the university. These concepts will be introduced here via a common language that students will encounter in courses throughout general education, as well as their major and minor coursework. In addition to an introduction to DJS, the course will introduce you to the methods and topics of study within a particular academic discipline or field. You might learn, for example, how geoscientists explore how geologic and human systems interact in the context of global climate change or you might learn how sociologists examine how the structures of human societies results in the distribution of resources.

FYEP 102Seminars may also fulfill program requirements and they further emphasize the academic skills that are at the center of the first year experience.