First-Year Experience Programs | College of Arts and Sciences | The University of Vermont(title)

In your first year, you can explore the many learning communities that make up the College of Arts and Sciences. Through interactions both inside and outside the classroom, you’ll establish lifelong relationships with professors and peers while also becoming an active intellectual citizen and agent for change.
a professor walks in front of a screen surrounded by a small group of students at desks

First-year seminars

In their first semester, students are encouraged to enroll in a First-Year Seminar (FYS), which is designed to help students begin to meaningfully engage with the liberal arts as a cornerstone of their UVM education. FYS courses are interactive and writing-intensive.

FYS courses
an isle of a large lecture hall

Large lecture experience

Enrolling in a larger class (100-plus seats) in the College of Arts and Sciences is also an important part of the first-year experience at UVM. Internationally recognized scholar-teachers, not teaching assistants, provide broad surveys of fields such as anthropology, history, and sociology.

Two students reading a novel.

Liberal Arts Scholars Program (LASP)

Are you looking to make the most of your first year of college? To meet like-minded, academically oriented peers and faculty with expertise in your areas of interest? To take three or four small, seminar-style classes with a cohort of other first-years?

Liberal Arts Scholars Program