The FSEM
by Jessica Evangelista Balduzzi ’05

The First-Year experience would not be complete without its quintessential first-year seminar, or the FSEM. Firstyear seminars at the Colleges are designed to stimulate intellectual curiosity, introduce academic expectations and engage students independent of future major or minor choices.
From peace movements to ancient warfare, Mozart to rock-and-roll, each seminar is designed to hone writing, speaking, critical thinking and other academic skills that students will draw upon throughout their careers at HWS. Classes in first-year seminars are small, between 13 and 15 students, to allow for discussion and debate in an intimate group. Some are Linked Course-Learning Communities, in which students live in the same residence hall, forming a community; others are Learning Community Pods, two seminars of related subject matter with students living in the same residence hall.
“First-year seminars offer exciting opportunities for exploration and collaboration for students and faculty alike,” says Eric Klaus, associate dean of First-Year Seminars and associate professor of German area studies. “The interplay of scholarship and creativity that is the hallmark of the program is celebrated at the end of the semester during the First-Year Seminar Symposium, where students present projects completed over the course of the semester.”
Here’s a peek at some of the first-year seminars that happened in fall 2014:
Stealing Art, Saving Art, Associate Professor of
Art and Architecture Michael Tinkler
What motivates people to collect art? What
motivates people to steal art? What motivates
rare individuals to fake art? In this seminar,
students look at the seamy underside and the high-minded public face of cultural property,
and the art world, from NAZI looters to
museum directors.

Partial Reading List:
- Whose Culture by James Cuno
- Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership by Colin Renfrew
You Are Here: Geneva 101, Associate Professor
of English Anna Credick, Professor of Art and
Architecture Nick Ruth and Professor of Political
Science Kevin Dunn
Welcome to Geneva, N.Y., your place of
residence for the next four years; the first four
years of your adult life. This course sets up
Geneva as a laboratory in which to seek to
understand the complex interaction of forces
that produce a “place:” demographics, natural
environment, built environment, and human
activity.
Partial Reading List:
- The Making of an Upstate Community: Geneva, New York by David Brumberg
- Wolves and Honey: A Hidden History of the Natural World by Susan Brind Morrow
The Avian Persuasion, Assistant Professor
of English and Comparative Literature Caroline
Manring
If you’ve ever wished you could fly, join
the club. If you’ve ever wondered why
you wished you could fly, take this course.
Humans have always been drawn to birds. In
this seminar, students ask why as they try to
understand human relationships with birds
from the perspectives of writers, musicians,
scientists, and back yard bird-watchers, among
other types of thinkers.
Partial Reading List:
- The Goshawk by T.H. White
- Crow Planet by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Rock Music & American Masculinities,
Senior Associate Dean of Hobart College Rocco
“Chip” Capraro
Elvis, Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones, Hendrix,
Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen. They were
some of the central figures in the history of
rock music in America and England from the
1950s to the 1980s. But what kind of men were
they? This seminar offers an interdisciplinary
look at the lives of these men of rock through
the lens of men’s studies: i.e., through the
history and theory of men’s identity and
experience.

Partial Reading List:
- The Forty-Nine Percent Majority: The Male Sex Role by Deborah David and Robert Brannon
- Re-Making Love: The Feminization of Sex by Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs
School Wars, Assistant Professor of Education
Khuram Hussain
Why are people willing to march, protest and
risk their lives and livelihood for schools they
can believe in? There is no public institution
that inspires, enrages and connects to American
ideals about “public good” more than schools.
But what is “good”? In this seminar students
ask, what’s worth fighting for in school... and
why? Students interrogate the conflicts that
rage over what the purpose of schools should
be and who should decide. Public protests,
creative peoples’ movements and even military
intervention have been waged with the aim
of directing the destiny of public education.
Through discussions, formal debates, group
projects, lectures, films and readings students
trace dynamic interests that vie to influence
schools and direct education policy.
Partial Reading List:
- The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future by Linda Darling- Hammond
- The Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools by Diane Ravitch
Fracking?, Professor of Geoscience D. Brooks
McKinney
Hydraulic fracturing, fracking for short, is a
controversial technique for extracting natural
gas from carbon rich shales. The Colleges
sit along the northern margin of one of the
most important areas for potential shale gas
development—the “Marcellus Shale play” as
it is known in the petroleum industry. Among
the arguments advanced by proponents of
Marcellus shale gas development are that it
can provide domestic energy security, that
it is more climate friendly than oil or coal,
and that its development will aid economic
development. Opponents counter that it may
threaten both the quantity and quality of
surface and subsurface waters, that shale gas
development will delay adoption of renewable
energy and that the industrialization of
the landscape associated with shale gas
development will threaten more sustainable
economic activities like tourism and
agriculture. Who is right?
Partial Reading List:
- The Science Beneath the Surface: A Very Short Guide to the Marcellus Shale by Don Duggan-Haas and Ross M. Robert
- The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World by Russell Gold
Sustainable Living: A Learning Community for
First-Year Students
by Steven Bodnar
This academic year, more than 50
first-year students are exploring
sustainability and consumption through
a new Learning Community, “Sustainable
Living.” The two-semester long program
emphasizes the relationship between
local actions and global effects.
“Sustainable Living gives students
interested in any aspect of sustainability
a strong start academically and toward
their careers,” explains Thomas Drennen,
professor of economics and chair of the
Environmental Studies Program. “The
unique living and learning model we are
piloting is designed to ensure that firstyear
students connect early and strongly
with their faculty advisers, with one
another, with the Colleges, and with this
beautiful region.”
Taught by Assistant Professor of
Environmental Studies Kristen Brubaker,
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies
Robin Lewis, and Visiting Assistant Professor
of Environmental Studies Tarah Rowse, the
Learning Community is led by Drennen,
who is also co-chair of the HWS President’s
Climate Task Force. Additionally, Eco-Reps and
upperclass students, who have expertise in
sustainability, serve as teaching assistants and
mentors.
As part of a Learning Community, all
56 members are living together in the same
co-ed residence hall along with four speciallyselected
resident assistants (RA). The RAs are
committed to the programming of Sustainable
Living and direct activities that support green
efforts throughout the year. The residence hall
is equipped with seminar rooms and a full
kitchen specially designed for the Learning
Community. Additionally, the participating
faculty have offices in the residence hall, as do
the teaching assistants.
Members of the Sustainable Learning
Community are enrolled in one of four sections
of the First Year Seminar (FSEM) “Consuming
the World,” which considers the life cycle of
things that we, as consumers buy, use and
throw away. The course explores the complex
relationship between sustainability and
consumption, paying specific attention to the
myriad ways in which individual consumption
practices shape global outcomes.
One day each week, all students, faculty
and teaching assistants take part in a combined
class to share perspectives, view films, and
discuss weekly experiments, such as weighing
trash and recyclables week, meat-free week,
maximum recycling challenge and more.
Field trips throughout the region provide
opportunities to learn more about Geneva and
the Finger Lakes, and include guided visits to
the landfill, a regional recycling center, and to
Fribolin Farm, a 35-acres farm owned by the
Colleges just a mile from campus.
This spring, students are remaining in
their sections, taking a linked course that
extends learning throughout the year to create
an integrated, interdisciplinary experience.
The Learning Community reinforces the
Colleges’ dedication to a campus-wide effort of
environmental sustainability.
Consuming the World,
Professor of Economics and
Chair of the Environmental
Studies Program Thomas
Drennen, Assistant Professor
of Environmental Studies
Kristen Brubaker, Assistant
Professor of Environmental Studies
Robin Lewis, and Visiting Assistant Professor of
Environmental Studies Tarah Rowse
We are all consumers. We buy things. We use
things up. We throw things away. Often we do
all of this without considering the life cycle of
these “things.” Think about all the T-shirts you
own. Do you know what materials make up
your T-shirts? Moreover, do you know what
was required to get these T-shirts to you in the
first place? While these questions may seem
to have simple answers, the reality is that each
of the “things” we consume has a complex
secret life of its own, one worthy of further
consideration.
Partial Reading List:
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food
Life by Barbara Kingsolver
• The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global
Economy: An Economist Examines the
Markets, Power and Politics of World Trade
by Pietra Rivoli
Current Issue
A Culture of Respect
- The national dialogue on sexual assault and how HWS is responding
- The Campus Dialogue
- Questions & Answers
- We Are HWS
Top Stories
- Gallouët Named Dean of William Smith
- Orientation and Convocation
- The FSEM
- Storm Chasing in the Scale of F
- Middle States Commission Lauds HWS
- Athletics
The Scandling Trust: Inspiring Others to Invest in HWS
Scale
- The little hors d'oeuvre that could
- Economies of Scale
- Mega Problem, Nano Solution
- Scaling Mountains
- Big Responsibility
- Big Decisions
- The Collection of a Lifetime
- Column Inches
- Tipping the Scales
- Off the Scale
- Stepping on the Scale
- Global Scale
- The Scales of Justice
- Managing Mammals, Small and Tall
- Scaling Barriers
- Game of Inches
- Scaling History
- On a Human Scale
- Ideas to Scale
- Steelhead Scales
- Snowflake to Avalanche
- Inheriting the Pentatonic Scale
- Small Hobby, Big Business
- Balancing the Scales
- Mini Models
Alumni/ae
- Serving the Colleges
- Rabbinical Careers Have Strong HWS Roots
- The Cooney-Doran Family
- Bookshelf
- Parallels
Past Issues