First-Year Seminar
First-year Seminars play a central role in the lives of incoming students at Stockton. First-Year Seminars are courses drawn from across the General Studies curriculum, so that each class has a different content area and academic focus. This is one of the things that makes our program unique, so that students can take courses on a range of topics including sustainability issues, mythology, diversity, the history of Paris, American stories, health care, the political economy, or detectives in literature. Whatever the focus, the seminars are carefully designed for new students, who will work on the essential skills of critical thinking, college-level reading practices, information literacy, and communication skills cultivated through writing, speaking, and listening.
First-year Seminars also include a common reading that is taught in all of the program’s various classes, which bring their own particular intellectual perspectives to the book. This book represents a student’s first shared intellectual experience with the incoming class, and engaging with the common reader is a cherished tradition at Stockton. The university provides the book for each new student and faculty plan opportunities to think about the text both inside and outside of the classroom. A Convocation Lecture presented to the entire first-year class culminates the student’s sustained engagement with the text, and is usually given by the author of the featured book.
Incoming students must sign up for a First-Year Seminar during their first semester, and cannot take more than one of these classes as part of their course of study. The credits earned count toward a student’s graduation requirements for every major and program, and all of the seminars are designed to help students practice the skills needed to be a better college student and achieve their life-long learning goals. First-year Seminars are an essential part of the First Year Experience (FYE) at Stockton, and the coordinators of both programs work closely to ensure that our new students have a welcoming and challenging first year.
First Year Seminar Fall 2025 Registration
For new students whose DegreeWorks says FRST 1002 Critical Thinking and Reading is needed, please see the link below for the Fall 2025 course offerings and descriptions.
FRST 1002 Critical Thinking and Reading Courses and Descriptions
For students whose DegreeWorks says FRST 1002 Critical Thinking and Reading is NOT needed, please see the link below for the Fall 2025 course offerings and descriptions.
The Common Reading
To Name the Bigger Lie
by Sarah Viren
An incisive journey into honesty and betrayal, this memoir explores the powerful pull
of dangerous conspiracy theories and the pliability of personal narratives in a world
dominated by hoaxes and fakes. An “ouroboros of a book” (The New York Times) and a “bold new approach to the genre of memoir” (The Millions), To Name the Bigger Lie also reads like the best of psychological thrillers—made all the more riveting because
it’s true.
Sarah Viren is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and author of the essay collection, Mine, a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel
Award for the Art of the Essay. She is also the author of To Name the Bigger Lie, a New York Times Editors’ Choice. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, she teaches in the creative
writing program at Arizona State University.
--Taken from Simon and Schuster
Convocation Lecture for First Year Students with Sarah Viren
For questions, please contact Geoffrey Gust: geoffrey.gust@stockton.edu or 609-652-4491
First-Year Seminar Program Convenor:
Geoffrey Gust, Ph.D.
geoffrey.gust@stockton.edu
609-652-4491
