The Freshman Year Initiative

As you plan for your first semester at Queens College, you'll register for two classes that are linked through the Freshman Year Initiative:

1. A topic-based writing course (ENG 110)
2. A course on a related topic that also satisfies a general education requirement.

For example:
Let’s say that you plan to major in something scientific, and you’re also an avid musician. You might like to join the Community called “Beauty and Jazz.” Your English professor will teach you how, through writing, you can apply what you're learning about Dizzy Gilespie and Charlie Parker in your Music 8 class to a consideration of our basic assumptions about beauty.

Whatever Community you choose, you'll attend both of those classes in a group of about twenty other first-year students, so you’ll get to know your classmates. Together, you’ll use what you learn in one class to help you in the other, and you’ll write scholarly essays at a college level.

FYI Learning Communities for 2012

• - Anthropology 101: Cultural Anthropology + English 110: Cultural Identity

  1. Who Are We?
     Anthropologists and writers share a common interest in how we become who we are. Students in this community will investigate and engage in scholarly debates about how cultural forces shape our beliefs and habits, and will learn the tools anthropologists use to study how people in different cultures make sense of themselves and their worlds. We will look at practices such as cannibalism in a remote part of Brazil and drug dealing in Harlem to ask why what seems strange or morally wrong to one group of people might be acceptable to another.

• - Art History 220: Renaissance Art and the Birth of Modernity + English 110: The Visual World

  1. Images and Ideas, Past and Present
     Even if we don’t know much about art, most of us are skilled visual observers of a modern world in which films and advertisements employ advanced and expensive technologies to show us images unlike any that we have seen before. In this Community, you’ll reflect upon your visual skills while putting them to a new use: exploring the major developments in the Renaissance world of Michaelangelo and da Vinci that helped to form the ideas about art and culture that we recognize today.

• - Computer Science 903: + English 110: Digital Revolutions

  1. Thinking and Computers
     How do computers think, and how does that compare to the way people think? In this Community, you’ll look under the visible surfaces of these machines that have become so essential to us—for work and play, for socializing and being alone. You’ll learn how computer scientists go about their work, and you’ll learn how to join them at the entry level of their field. You’ll also practice writing about the ways that computer scientists change the ways that the rest of us live in our world.

• - Dance 150: Introduction to Dance + English 110: Creativity

  1. Creating Dance
     “The body says what words cannot,” the choreographer Martha Graham observed, comparing her life in dance to the life of a writer. Students in this Community will consider the ways that creative expression happens through dance and writing, and you’ll test the ways that it happens for you. You’ll enter into academic debates about the ways that innovative thinkers come up with new ideas, and you’ll use what you learn about dance to test the theories that you develop. You don’t have to be a good dancer to join this Community— you just have to be willing to try.

• - Drama 100: Introduction to Acting + English 110: Page to Stage

  1. Theater in Real Life
     How do actors become the people that they portray? They don’t, of course, but they convince us that they do temporarily by turning the words of a script into the thoughts and feelings that they make visible to us. Students in this Community will consider how that transformation happens, and you’ll transform, too, as you practice the art of acting. You’ll enter into scholarly debates about theater production, and you’ll practice the methods that professional actors use to prepare for the roles that they play.

• - Education 105: Global Education + English 110: Higher Education

  1. Politics of Education
     In school, you’ve learned when to sit down and when to stand up, but you’ve also learned to respect people—from George Washington to Rosa Parks—who changed the course of history by refusing to do as they were told. Students in this Community write about the politics of educational systems in the US and around the world, asking how a student becomes a citizen and vice versa. You’ll write about the ways that your high school taught you the place that you inhabit in your nation and your world, and you’ll study the politics that shaped the lessons that you learned.

• - Environmental Science 100: Challenges to Our Humanity [Lab] + English 110: The Planet

  1. Our Changing World
     We all know basic facts about the environment—that pollution is bad, for example, and recycling is good—but scientists tell us that we need to learn much more, and we need to learn it quickly for the sake of the planet. Students in this Community will look beyond the easy answers about environmental science as you reach your own conclusions about the evidence that you discover. You will practice the scientific method as you analyze the arguments that prove most convincing to the leading scientists of our time.

• - FNES 163: Nutrition + English 110: Food

  1. The Culture and Science of Food
     What happens inside you when you eat a hamburger, a carrot, a cookie, or a dumpling? What happens among us when we share those foods across cultures and in families? In this Community, you’ll learn the science of nutrition as you also take a critical look at the ways that we build social worlds around food. You’ll test your knowledge about the relationship between food and health, and you’ll learn how to challenge the conventional wisdom that you read.

• - History 104: US History, 1865-Present + English 110: American Dreams

  1. The United States, History and Myth
     What unites the United States? How did Americans heal the divisions that made us take up arms against each other during the Civil War, and what are the greatest threats to that unity in the twentieth century? In this Community, you’ll learn how contemporary historians answer these questions and others as you also study the reflection of those realities in the American dream. As you study the history of the United States from the end of slavery to the present, you’ll learn how to construct reliable arguments about the reality and dreams that we share.

• - LCD 100: Language in Context + English 110: Literacy and Language

  1. What Words Mean
     Where did you learn the definition for the word “obnoxious”? Whether you learned it from a book or from your brother or a friend, you probably used the sophisticated reasoning processes that you’ll study in this Community. You’ll learn how our minds make meaning out of language as you analyze the ways that you learned to read, speak, and write. You’ll investigate the processes that enable the English language to change over time, and you’ll write about the ways that human beings share their thoughts with words.

• - Media Studies 144: Film History + ENG 110: Reading Film

  1. Reading Film
     How can you “read” a film? Students in this Community will learn a variety of ways to answer that question as you enter into scholarly debates about film history. You’ll ask what American film noir reveals about the political culture of its time, and you’ll debate how Italian neo-realism illuminates the place of Italy in the world. You’ll also practice writing about visual media as you consider the ways that history looks at the movies.

• - MNS 113: Great Ideas in Science + English 110: Writing our Biology

  1. How Scientists See Us
     How have “great ideas” in science changed the way we understand the world and our place in it? How do scientists interpret the world through a scientific lens? And how does the way we write about scientific concepts affect the way we understand them? In this Community you’ll work with faculty in biology and physics as well as English to explore the ongoing journey of discovery that provides an historical perspective into the realm of scientific understanding.

• - Music 8: Jazz + English 110: Beauty

  1. Beauty and Jazz
     When Thelonious Monk composed a jazz song in waltz time, he gave it a title that is also a paradox: “Ugly Beauty”. He put order and disorder together, and he raised questions that you’ll ask in this Community, too: What is beauty, and how does it work? How do we know it when we see it, smell it, and hear it? Students in this Community will refine your definitions of beauty and its opposites as you enter into philosophical conversations about the meanings of those words. You’ll study the history and aesthetics of jazz—a peculiarly American musical idiom that has a particularly rich history in Queens—and consider the degrees of beauty that you find there.

• - Philosophy 101: Introduction to Philosophy + English 110: Writing Religion

  1. Religion and Philosophy
     When René Descartes set out to prove the existence of God, he also proved the existence of himself: “I think,” he asserted, “therefore, I am.” Contemporary philosophers approach religion very differently than Descartes did in the seventeenth century, and students in this Community will learn why. As you engage with some of the most important thinkers in the philosophical tradition, you’ll learn how they construct their arguments, and you’ll argue with them, too. You’ll develop your own theory about the ways that religion works in contemporary American culture and you’ll position yourself as a scholar in the field.

• - Political Science 102: The Shock of the New + English 110: Writing Economy

  1. The Economics and Politics of Change
     Is the American economy in a recession or a depression, and are the indicators that have pointed downward beginning to look up? Students in this Community will learn how writers describe economic change, and you’ll test the ways that those descriptions apply to political change as well. You’ll study real historical events that make the shape of the world seem completely different—the Holocaust, for example, and September 11, 2011—and engage with scholarly arguments about their political and economic effects.

• - Psychology 101 + English 110: Memory

  1. Memory and the Mind
     How do our memories of childhood shape our lives as grown-ups, and what can scholars tell us about the ways that those memories are created, stored, and recalled? In this Community, you will enter into conversation with psychologists about the latest research on the human mind, and you’ll write about the ways that our memories work and fail. You’ll consider the ways that we remember things individually and also in communities, using the knowledge you gain about human psychology to reflect also on the ways that we remember events of historical importance.

• - Sociology 101 + English 110: Social Movements

  1. Writing Social Change
     Sociology has always had an overriding concern with social transformation through collective action, civil unrest, and revolutionary movements. Changing political alignments affect the style, voice, argumentation and format of debates in Sociology. As the field has evolved, research methods have evolved as well, and sociologists have found themselves adjusting their writing techniques. By reading key texts from past and present social movements, as well scholarly anaylses of these movements, students will assess and critique the rhetorical means that writers use to persuade, provoke, educate, explain and prescribe social change, with particular attention to the evolution of social movement studies since the 60s.

• - URBST 101: Urban Poverty and Affluence + English 110: New York City

  1. The Truth About Getting Rich
     Americans have historically put great faith in “the American Dream,” which tells us that even the unlikeliest among us can come to the city and find a fortune. And while few of us expect to actually become the next Steve Jobs, Donald Trump, or Oprah Winfrey, we plan our lives and careers in the long shadow of these examples. This Community will give you an opportunity to learn the facts behind prevailing myths about wealth and poverty in American cities. You’ll learn how scholars study the forces that shape the ways that we travel up and down the socio-economic ladder. Entering into conversation with that scholarly tradition, you’ll analyze economic mobility in the context of race, immigration, criminal justice, health, employment, the environment and corporate interests.

• - URBST 103: Urban Diversity + English 110: American Dreams

  1. The American City
     Throughout our history, immigrants have come to cities like New York to work through the complex processes of becoming American. The recent census reflects declining diversity in some parts of New York City, and growing diversity in others—but why, and what does this new geography suggest about the ways that race and class work for New Yorkers, and about the changing conditions of American cities more generally? Students in this Community will learn how scholars study the structural inequalities of urban environments like ours, and you’ll debate the possible ways that we might interpret the evidence that we find around us. You’ll study the myths and the facts about American cities, and you’ll join scholars who ask hard questions about the ways that we live together.

• - URBST 107: Queens as a Global Community + English 110: New York City

  1. Global New York
     Those of us who live in New York City know that people come here from all over the world, and each of us has our own impressions of the ways that cultures clash and grow in our city. But where does that diversity come from, and how does it really work? Which populations are growing and shrinking around us, and how effectively do we share our space? Students in this Community will learn how New York City looks to scholars of urban studies, and you’ll write about the ways that it looks to you.