First-Year Seminars

Guelph’s First-Year Seminars (FYS) are fun, small-group seminars open to every first year student. Limited to 18 students per seminar, and with fascinating subjects like social justice, baseball, improv, or growing food on Mars, they're a great way to meet fellow Gryphons and sharpen your thinking and communication skills. 

Seminar topics have included:

• Guns, Germs, Steel and the Great Escape
• Baseball by the Numbers: Learning How to Analyse Baseball Data
• Feeding 9 Billion Ideas Congress

Here’s what some students have said about their seminar experience:

• “Warm and comfortable environment – everyone is free to express their opinion.”
• “I now feel much better prepared to take on more challenging courses.”
• “Open-ended, in-depth, flexible style.”
• “The course opened my mind to new perspectives and ways of thinking.”
• “I learned to be critical of resources, ideas and thoughts.”
• “I’ve already started to get higher marks on my essays in other classes because of what I’ve learned in this course.”