First Year Programs

HPU is committed to providing students with a unique, challenging, and supportive academic environment. This commitment begins with our First-Year Programs, a collection of innovative courses and services designed to help students make thoughtful, productive transitions to college. In courses that promote critical thinking, rigorous inquiry and effective communication, students learn how to ask big questions, analyze information and mediate new knowledge. With the help of academic support services, students hone their study skills, build their confidence and learn to incorporate feedback.

High Point University’s general education program begins with a First-Year Seminar (FYS): a discussion-rich and interactive seminar, designed to introduce first-year students to the techniques and habits of intellectual inquiry that distinguish a university-educated person. A myriad of First-Year Seminars are offered each semester, each tackling a different “big question” that has no easy answer. Each seminar offers topics that are intellectually stimulating and engaging to students, motivating them to understand and analyze concepts at a higher level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

All students are required to take ENG 1103, “College Writing and Public Life,” in the fall or spring of their first year. As a cornerstone of the Core Curriculum, ENG 1103 is a course where students develop: dispositions and strategies for academic inquiry; knowledge of the conventions of academic writing; and practice using relevant information and writing technologies. All sections of ENG 1103 share common objectives and students have similar experiences across sections. Students gain extensive practice in process strategies and engage in ongoing conversation about expectations for college writing.