Academics

First-Year Intensives

Philosophy Professor Wes Demarco’s teaches The Good Life, a First-Year Intensive course

Students in philosophy Professor Wes Demarco’s The Good Life, a First-Year Intensive course, spend a semester exploring the connections between health, achievements, social involvement, ethical endeavors, and living a satisfactory life.

As the first step in our undergraduate curriculum, your First-Year Intensive (FYI) course builds the intellectual, social, and emotional foundations you need to thrive at Clark and beyond.

Typically limited to 16 students, First-Year Intensive courses let you begin your Clark career by developing close relationships with a professor and group of peers who share your interests. Your First-Year Intensive professor will likely be your academic adviser until you declare a major, and will help you navigate your transition from high school to college.

You can choose from more than 30 different courses, which change from year to year. No matter which First-Year Intensive you take, you’ll learn in a supportive, welcoming environment and you’ll build crucial skills — including critical thinking, writing, and debating — that will increase your confidence and success in other courses.

In their words

“I wanted to learn more from the experts in the field, learn more about what it takes to be a scientist, about networking and writing proposals, and about climate policy.” 

—Aedan Derrick ’26

Deep learning
Aedan Derrick ’26, center and Matt Shea ’26, left, present their research project, “Climate Change Adaptations of Major American Waterways,” at the poster salon that culminated their first-year intensive course.

In the First-Year Intensive class, Navigating the Global Climate Crisis, students met with internationally renowned scholars such as Geography Professor Karen Frey — a polar scientist and author of a chapter for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) annual Arctic Report Card — and young alumni working in the field as they worked on their own original research.

Join the conversation

During their first year at Clark, political science majors Ruthie Brian ’24, Beiyna Chaparian ’24, and Anna Walker ’24 took a course that called for comic books rather than textbooks. In the First-Year Intensive course Comic Books and Politics with Professor Ora Szekely, students used superhero tropes as a vehicle to analyze historical and contemporary politics.

Professor Ora Szekely

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