FTS Facts

  • Gustavus faculty created the First-Term Seminar program in 1991
  • All FTS professors are tenured or tenure-track members and complete an intensive training program before teaching their first FTS section FTS Professor Becky Fremo meets with a student
  • All FTS courses must be approved by the faculty’s Curriculum Committee
  • FTS sections are capped at 16 students; the average number of students in an FTS section in 2012 was 14.7
  • FTS classes satisfy one of the three writing requirements for graduation
  • Approximately 90% of Gustavus students take a FTS
  • Students from the FTS class Leisure Quest: Taking Back Your Time are responsible for the construction of the Adirondack chairs you see around campus Professor Sarah Ruble's 2012 FTS Class
  • 106 Gustavus professors have been trained to teach FTS

  • FTS classes offered in 2012 included: Zen Combat, Railroads and the American Adventure, Pop Music U.S.A, Race and the American Vision, Toy Design, and Framing the Family: Reality Television and the (Re)Construction of Homelife

  •  FTS students in The Politics of Homelessness participate in the National Hunger and Homelessness Sleepout each November
  • Students in the 2012 How Do We Vote FTS partnered with the College Democrats and the College Student participates in the Annual Hunger and Homelessness SleepoutRepublicans to conduct a voter registration drive in which 232 Gustavus students registered to vote

  •  Many FTS professors are award winning teachers: Fourteen current FTS professors have won the Edgar M. Carlson Award for Distinguished Teaching (Including Professors Fremo, Rosenthal, Zust, Brammer, Leitch, Saulnier, Heldke, Johnson, Hailperin, Amamoto, Gilbert, Huff, Lammert, and Wren)