UC Davis has been awarded a $600,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to offer new undergraduate courses that integrate the arts, humanities and science. The new SHAPE program – Science, Humanities and Arts: Process and Engagement – will offer interdisciplinary courses co-taught by faculty from the arts, humanities and science, and the curriculum will be augmented with the work of visiting performance artists. To address the marginalization of the arts and a lack of understanding of science, the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts will partner with the Davis Humanities Institute, the University Honors Program, and First-Year Seminars to co-create 10 undergraduate courses during the 2020-21 and 2021-22 academic year.

"Today, character limits on social media prevent such a deep knowledge exchange, holding us back from bigger picture learning. Consider this First-Year Seminar as ‘project pen pal’. It is designed to orient the international student to American cultural thinking, and provide an international perspective to domestic students through interaction with the many cultures UC Davis hosts on campus."

"On a sunny spring afternoon, students in the First-Year Seminar class 'Wild Davis' ambled through the arboretum’s oak grove, inspecting the trees and their growths... There’s a lot to see on the UC Davis campus, and Department of Evolution and Ecology faculty Sharon Strauss and Laci Gerhart-Barley designed 'Wild Davis' with a simple goal: to connect new students, regardless of academic discipline, with the plants and animals that also call UC Davis home."

"One of Justin Garey’s greatest takeaways from the First-Year Seminar (FYS) 'I Want to Be a Consultant, I Just Don’t Know What They Do' was learning the difference between a process and a project.

"'A process needs to be efficient and smart and a project can be quick and ugly, solving the immediate problem,' said Garey, a junior majoring in managerial economics. 'Applicable to real life, I wish I knew it 10 years ago.'"

Dust off your favorite flannel and Nirvana tee. Professor Robert Newcomb of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese has found a way to bring grunge – its music and culture – to UC Davis with his class, “Smells Like Teen Spirit: Grunge and the Seattle Sound.”

Grunge may not be played on mainstream radio stations anymore, but Newcomb said that when he taught the course for the first time in Spring 2015, he had “a sense that there was something in the air that might make this a course that would have some popularity and resonance.”

The Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts has made $5 student tickets available for several performances through their Curriculum Connections program.

Attendance at performances counts toward classroom hours, so attendance at 2 performances would cover 3-4 hours of class time. Tours of the Mondavi Center, and classroom visits from Mondavi staff may be arranged.

First-Year Seminars tap into the shared curiosity of UC Davis students and their instructors to create communities of people excited to learn.  With approximately 300 seminars offered each year, there’s plenty to discover.  

Check out 13 of the most unique courses offered at UC Davis, including The Cultural Life of the City of Davis, Zombies and Druids, Eating in California, and There is Life After Cheddar!

First-year students are often too intimidated to approach faculty, but these small classes that are capped at 19 students help break down barriers. With over 300 seminars offered each year, these unique classes offer first-year UC Davis students the opportunity to connect with faculty over unique interests and a shared sense of curiosity.

Instructors choose their own topics, and often combine disciplines: ‘Experimental Magic’ brings together neurology with slight-of-hand; ‘Why Do People Relinquish their Dogs’ brings a statistical approach to dog abandonment; and ‘Psychology of Drumming’ asks what makes certain people choose drums over melodic instruments.”