Faculty Experience Teaching in an Interdisciplinary First-Year Seminar Program: The Case of the University of Guelph

First-year seminar programs have been a feature on the landscape of post-secondary teaching and learning in the United States, since they first appeared in the 1880s at Boston University (Mamrick, 2005). More recently, they have begun to appear at Canadian universities. For example, first-year seminars were introduced a decade ago at the University of Guelph, as a campus-wide initiative. To recognize the first decade that these unique, interdisciplinary seminars have been offered, faculty were surveyed to understand better the impact of the program on those teaching in it, as well as their perceptions of their students. The experience of the University of Guelph suggests first-year seminar programs can have a significant influence on the teaching and professional experience of faculty and encourages them to extend their networks beyond the department and across the campus. Significantly, seminars serve as sites for pedagogical experimentation that can influence departmental curricula. Faculty who teach a first-year seminar have high satisfaction and report myriad benefits to morale, teaching, and research. The salutary effects of a first-year seminar program are not local but would be transferable across post-secondary institutions.