First-year seminars in the Patrick Leahy Honors College
First-year Patrick Leahy Honors College students take two-courses, one in the fall (HCOL 1000) and one in the spring (HCOL 1500). Seminars during the fall semester engage with a wide variety of contemporary social and ecological challenges; all seminars share a focus on writing and information literacy. The spring semester seminars build on skills and knowledge formed in the fall and introduce students to collaborative group work and public speaking.
Through these first-year courses, students become well-acquainted with each other and the PLHC faculty. By living with fellow honors students and attending social hours and other events, they create together an exciting intellectual community.
Summer reading and writing
Every summer, incoming first-year students read a book that is distributed to the entire cohort and complete an essay that is due on the first day of their section of HCOL 1000 in the fall. While the various sections of HCOL 1000 differ in content, engaging with summer read is an experiences that all new PLHC students share.
Summer 2024 assignment
The 2024 PLHC Summer read is The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable by Amitav Ghosh.
For incoming first-year students, this is your summer essay prompt: Why do you think Amitav Ghosh believes that the contemporary climate crisis is also a crisis of the imagination? Please focus your response to this question on one of the three areas of his critique—literature, historical thinking, or politics—and present an argument using evidence from The Great Derangement about whether or not you agree with this framing of the discussion.
You will bring this essay to the first day of your HCOL 1000 seminar. Your finished paper should be no more than about 750 words (two to three pages, double spaced). It should be titled and marked with page numbers. Please note that no outside research is expected for this assignment.
Common Hour
The entire first-year cohort has Wednesday evenings from 5:05 to 6:20 p.m. open on their schedules so that they can attend workshops and events related to academic advising and the first-year experience. This is additionally a time when Patrick Leahy Honors College students all know that they are available to study together or collaborate on group assignments.