University of King's College - case study

Setting first-year students up for success: University of King’s College foundation year program

It’s been around for nearly 40 years and deals with some of the oldest texts of Western civilization.

But the Foundation Year Program at the University of King’s College in Halifax continues to offer a fresh approach to the Western tradition’s core literature and ideas, immersing 300 first-year students annually in a seamless, interdisciplinary experience that remains a flagship program for the university.

“It’s a great books program,” says Daniel Brandes, who was a student in FYP 20 years ago and is now its director. “We assume that what matters most for young students is encountering these primary texts so that later in their university careers, when they begin to encounter secondary scholarship, they’ll have a proper basis for judging its value.”

Students consider the development of Western thought and civilization through the multiple lenses of philosophy, literature, history, natural and social sciences, music and mathematics. The program takes up the bulk of their year, comprising four full-year courses for arts, journalism and music majors – who take just one additional full-year course — and three for science students, who take another two science courses.

Student Hilary Ilkay calls the FYP “one of the most challenging, exciting, rewarding experiences I’ve ever had. It was completely life-changing.”

The program’s reading list drew her away from her original idea to study in her hometown of Toronto. But Ms. Ilkay says the block scheduling of classes – daily two-hour lectures in the morning with a small group tutorial after that and Tuesdays off – also deepened her learning once she got to King’s.

The fact “it’s all laid out for you,” made the transition to university easier, says Ms. Ilkay, who has gone on to major in classics as a result of her FYP experience.

Instead of studying texts thematically, the year is divided into six historical periods done in four-week blocks, beginning with the ancient world – including the Bible and Plato’s Republic – and ending in contemporary times, with works such as Eliot’s The Waste Land and Freud’s New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.

Students are exposed to about 60 texts over the year and produce an essay every two weeks, with intense focus on improving their writing skills.

What makes it possible to deliver the program is a combination of teaching fellows, senior fellows, and assistant professors, as well as fully-tenured professors, all of whom also run tutorials. Ordinarily only tenured professors run first-year courses at King’s.

Tutorials are the heart of the program because, with 15 or fewer students, they allow even the quietest ones to develop their own voice and become more confident in their ideas and analytical skills.

“Once they’ve found their feet, they’re much more successful for the rest of their university career,” says Dr. Brandes.

More information: Go to the website of the King’s foundation year program