Fascinating Firsts: How Learning Launches Off at Whitman

Imagine a classroom buzzing with enthusiastic discussions, where students from all backgrounds exchange views and tackle big ideas from multiple angles. That’s the experience of a First Year Seminar at Whitman College. 

Over two semesters, first-year students get a taste of Whitman’s challenging and inspiring academics—and develop skills that help prepare them for the rest of their education. 

During the fall semester, in Exploring Complex Questions, students break into collaborative learning communities seeking answers to intriguing questions, such as: How do the boundaries of the body intersect with the environment? What can games teach us about our agency, morality and values? And what do we learn by examining the nature and experience of time?

Then, in the spring semester, Making Powerful Arguments helps students hone their ability to write and speak persuasively while diving into a hand-picked topic that interests them. Here are a few of the fun and fascinating courses the Class of 2028 chose from in Spring 2025. 

Monsters & Monstrosity

From Shakespearean specters to contemporary cinematic horrors, Monsters and Monstrosity, taught by Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Aarón Aguilar-Ramírez, examines how societies across the globe create, fear and reinterpret monsters.

For Nick Twum, a Davis UWC Scholar from Ghana, the course offered a chance to explore his heritage in a new light. “I chose this class because I found it interesting to think about the mythological creatures from my own culture,” he says.

Class discussions were a highlight for Twum, offering a broad range of perspectives. “It’s fascinating to hear stories about creatures I’m familiar with from people with entirely different cultural backgrounds,” he says.

Through close readings and analyses, Twum has developed stronger writing and argumentation skills. “The professor encourages us to be precise in our analyses, to look into the specifics of a text rather than leaving things ambiguous,” he says. “That has really helped me improve my writing.”

James Baldwin’s America

In James Baldwin’s America, taught by Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Religion Daniel Schultz, students delved into how Baldwin’s work confronts the contradictions around race and the legacy of slavery in America. The course challenged them to analyze how literature and film shape our understanding of racial differences. 

Daniela Espana, from Cicero, Illinois, first encountered Baldwin’s writing in high school. She explains that the class built on her analytical skills while opening up new avenues for discussion—“from personal experiences to things we have seen on TV that are relevant to the reading,” she says. 

Through movie screenings, plays and dynamic debates, Espana was pleasantly surprised to learn that “asking questions is OK and, a lot of time, even necessary to hear different perspectives from other students.”

House & Home

What makes a house a home? Taught by Michelle Janning, the Raymond and Elsie DeBurgh Chair of Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology, this course takes a deep dive into this most fundamental yet complex question. 

For Tabish Navaid, a Davis UWC Scholar from India, the course deeply resonated with his cultural values. “In South Asia, your home and your family are a very big part of you,” he explains. The course’s interdisciplinary approach also captured his interest and gave it wide-ranging appeal: “We venture into architecture, sociology, psychology, politics, economics and everything,” he says. “There’s something for everyone in this class.”

Through this exploration, he began to see home as more than just a physical space. “I learned how much deeper the concept of a home is—it’s not just an edifice you can build anywhere,” he says. “It is an amalgamation of many things: personal, social, economic, political and aesthetic, but we often overlook that complexity.” 

Dante Squires, a first-year student from Sonoma, California, chose the class because of his personal connection to the theme. His experience evacuating during the 2017 California wildfires gave him a deeper appreciation for the emotional weight of home and inspired his interest in the class. “It was in that moment, while facing the idea of losing everything we own, that I really became attached to my home,” he says. 

Through creative assignments like building Lego homes, crafting physical representations of course readings and engaging in academic debates, Dante found that the class always stayed interesting.

On her side, Professor Janning emphasizes the problem-solving skills the course hones. “I hope students learn that understanding and tackling issues require looking at them from multiple disciplinary lenses,” she says. “I also hope that students will move on to the rest of their college experience having practiced the process of problem-solving as iterative and collaborative.”

For someone who came to Whitman hoping to balance his interest in STEM with broader academic experiences in the humanities, Squires says his First Year Seminars delivered. His fall semester course was taught by Senior Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art History and General Studies Libby Miller. “Sociology and art history were never things I thought I’d be interested in—but now I want to take more classes like them.” He also credits the First Year Seminars for helping him grow as a writer—essays that once felt daunting now feel like “a piece of cake,” he says.

Learning to Learn & Protect Your Brain

Students interested in neuroscience-based strategies to enhance their learning had the opportunity to explore the brain with Associate Professor of Biology Thomas Knight. 

For Millicent Mukoya, a first-year student from Kenya, this class was an opportunity to dive into her passion for understanding the human body. The class has a direct application to her day-to-day life, she says. For example, learning that sleep deprivation impairs judgment as much as alcohol consumption was a life-changing wake-up call: “I now consistently sleep for eight hours because I realized that skipping sleep is equivalent to killing my brain,” she says 

She highly recommends the course to other students who are looking to understand how we learn: “His class teaches you how your brain works, how to protect it and to use it effectively.”

The course emphasized active learning through discussions, small-group analysis of research papers and hands-on activities. One memorable demonstration involved trying to hit a target while blindfolded. Mukoya recalls initially missing left, seeing the target, then overcorrecting and missing right, illustrating how gradual exposure and correction are key to learning.

Projecting a Self

What does it mean to pursue a project, even in the face of difficulty—and what does that pursuit reveal about the person behind it? Students engaged directly and deeply with those questions in Projecting a Self, taught by Jenna Terry, Senior Lecturer of Rhetoric, Writing and Public Discourse and General Studies. 

The course’s focus on taking action perfectly aligned with Faith Culpepper’s passion for projects. But for Culpepper, a first-year from Las Vegas, it was more than an academic exploration—it was a transformative experience. 

“For a long time,” she says, “I wasn’t comfortable talking about something unless I was 100% knowledgeable about it. But this class taught me that my opinion is valuable, and just because what I have to say is different from what everyone else thinks, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.” The class has been a true confidence-builder, she says. “As a shy person, I now surprisingly find myself speaking to the whole class.” 

Students repeatedly praised the spirit of support and collaboration that reigned in the class. Culpepper describes it as “a community of sharing,” adding, “If someone is confused, others help. If someone has a question, people step in. Everyone is so full of life, enthusiastic and motivated.”

Additionally, she appreciates how Terry fosters a welcoming space. “She’s really nice and funny,” Culpeper says “She even made us lasagna for movie night! It made me feel so much closer to her.”

Catherine Graham ’28, a first-year student from Berkeley, California, echoes this feeling. “It definitely has a stronger community than any of my other classes,” she says. “I really like the discussion-based aspects of it.” One highlight? A creative group project that asked students to reinterpret a scene from “Frankenstein” by acting it out and filming it. Graham’s group filmed their short movie in Penrose Library, creatively playing with lights and changing rooms to re-create their scene’s eerie zeitgeist. It was both playful and thought-provoking, she says. Weekly small-group meetings outside of class further deepened this spirit of collaboration. 

For her part, Terry says she appreciates the richness of engaging with students from diverse academic backgrounds, the thrill of exploring layered interpretations of texts and the fulfillment of “supporting students in finding what matters to them beyond a particular class—possibly beyond a specific academic discipline or goal.” 

For her, the course’s meaning is more than academic. “I do believe that part of what makes humans human is our ability to care about what we do, to act with intention and value, to express ourselves outwardly and be with others, to bring others into mutually meaningful community through what we care about,” she explains. “It is my belief—and my discipline—that cultivating a project which sincerely expresses and reflects the self is part of what it means to live a good life.”

Race, Gender, Representation 

How do movies, music and memes shape our perception of ourselves and others? Through an unusual blend of academic readings and media content, this course examined how pop culture represents religious, racial, sexual, disability and working-class differences. 

With spirited discussions in a classroom where Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies Tarik Elseewi contributes as a peer rather than a leader, this course created an engaging environment where every student was invited to explore and challenge the narratives of representation.

As Bethel Ayele, a Davis UWC Scholar from Ethiopia, explains, “I thought the class would expose me to things I am personally interested in as a woman of color on campus and that it would center around issues that people like me face.” But it has also reshaped her thinking, she says. “The class has helped me think in a more critical and structured way and exposed me to different perspectives through the wide selection of class readings. This has fundamentally improved my ability to frame arguments, support them with evidence and make analysis.” 

The Power of Firsts

First Year Seminars offer a unique blend of intellectual challenge, personal growth and community building. Whether analyzing representation in pop culture, reexamining Baldwin’s America, exploring the meaning of home, uncovering the biology of learning, or analyzing the significance of monsters across cultures, these courses push students to think critically, ask bold questions, and engage deeply with diverse perspectives.