Cherry Blossoms

Discovery Seminars Call for Proposals

Discovery Seminars are four-week, five-credit courses offered to first-year undergraduates during Early Fall Start (EFS), the month immediately preceding the start of Autumn Quarter. The goal of the program is to introduce students to the intellectual excitement and rigor of a world-class university through an intensive disciplinary immersion. In a sense, we are branding college-level learning through these small seminars, taught by regular UW faculty on a wide range of topics, with enrollment limited to 25 students. Rather than simply a menu of discrete course options, Discovery Seminars anchor a programmatic approach to making apparent the expansiveness and breadth of liberal learning through which students are encouraged to make connections, synthesize content, and create coherence across modes of inquiry, something that they will be asked to do throughout their career here and beyond.

The Discovery Seminar program has enjoyed great success and growth in recent years, maintaining healthy enrollments even when offered in a completely remote format during the ongoing pandemic. The small-class environment and the quality of the courses bring consistently positive feedback from both faculty ("I enjoyed this teaching experience more than just about any in my over 20 years on the faculty at UW") and students ("I've realized that college is a new level of learning and I need to alter the student I am in order to do well. College is placing me on a new journey.").

We are excited to announce that, pending any unforeseen circumstances, we will be returning to a fully in-person Early Fall Start in 2022!

If you are interested in participating, submit your proposal through this online form (or copy and paste this URL in your browser: https://admin.artsci.washington.edu/discovery-seminar-proposals). A one-page course description will be sufficient at this point, but you will want to be thinking about course logistics in the meantime (course curriculum information, possible field trips, classroom requirements, required textbooks or other course materials, guest speakers, etc.).

You can see a list of the courses offered this past year on the Discovery Seminar web page.

We expect to offer approximately 25 - 30 Discovery Seminars in 2022. Courses will begin Tuesday, August 23 and end Friday, September 16, 2022. Courses meet Tuesday through Friday for 2½ hours, starting at 9 or 9:30 AM and ending at 11:30 or noon, respectively. Faculty instructors will receive one month of salary and will be invited to participate in planning workshops in Spring quarter and a lunchtime meeting during Early Fall Start.

NOTE: Proposals are due by FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2021. We will select the 2022 seminars before the end of the quarter. Instructors of those seminars that are approved will be asked to submit detailed course information by January 14, 2022. Our colleagues from Continuum College will be collecting that information.

Chairs and directors will be automatically contacted for their endorsement. There is no need to request a letter of endorsement from them. They will be also provided with a copy of your proposal.

The selection process is competitive; we typically receive more proposals than we can accommodate. Because this is a self-sustaining program, we will prioritize courses likely to succeed in drawing new freshmen.

We look forward to another great set of Discovery Seminars for 2022. I am always happy to answer any questions.

Best,

Cynthia Caci

Senior Director of College Advising

College of Arts & Sciences

ccaci@uw.edu | 206.616.6518