Your First Year Experience at UNC Asheville

A Showcase of the First Year Seminar

By UNC Asheville

January 14^th, 2021

It's your first year at UNC Asheville, and there's a lot to learn–and not just in class. On top of starting your academic education, you have to learn how to navigate just being in college, maybe living apart from your family for the first time. There's managing money, determining which classes to take, learning how to keep yourself healthy, not to mention figuring out how to get along with a roommate.

That's where the First-Year Seminar comes in. Courses like "Where I come from y adonde voy," "The Art and Science of Social Resistance," and "GRIT: What Psychology Tells Us About Learning & Success," teach not only fascinating, interdisciplinary topics, but also how to succeed at college life in general. You'll get the nuts and bolts of being a student at UNC Asheville, from how to find the Writing Center to what it means to have a liberal arts and sciences education.

Combined with LANG 120 (where you'll learn how to read and write like a college student) and your first humanities course (the foundation of your UNC Asheville liberal arts education), your first year at UNC Asheville will help you lay the groundwork to get the most out of your college experience.

You'll also get to try your hand at some amazing interdisciplinary projects. Check out just a few of the projects below, which include original music, videos, podcasts, visual art, infographics, written word, and more. Or, visit the First-Year Student Showcase website to see them all.

Welcome to UNC Asheville (Ancient Greek Hymn-style)

Stranger, welcome...

Students in Professor Sophie Mills' first year seminar in the Classics Department took a page out of Sophocles' (very old) book, Oedipus at Colunus, and wrote "hymns of welcome" to new comers to UNC Asheville, modeled after Oedipus' own hymn of welcome to his home near Athens.

Oedipus' song of welcome starts, Stranger, in this land of fine horses you have come to earth's fairest home, the shining Colonus. Here the nightingale, a constant guest, trills her clear note under the trees of green glades, dwelling amid the wine-dark ivy and the god's inviolate foliage, rich in berries and fruit, unvisited by sun, unvexed by the wind of any storm.

UNC Asheville's "School of Athens" mural in Highsmith Student Union

Student Sage Robinson's hymn of welcome to UNC Asheville begins, Children, welcome to UNCA, the most accepting, caring university of them all, a land proud of its bulldogs, a land where all sorts of people come together to rejoice in each other’s warmth, even if we have to socially distance, the great green mountains, the giant pines that reach into the sky on the grounds of Asheville, a place untrodden by many evils.

This is a land where the community of many different races, sexualities, genders, and backgrounds can come together. This is a land where justice is fought, where the rights and wrongs of the world are challenged. A place where acceptance is valued and protected, if only to one day see the world do the same.

This is a land where great streams and rivers flow throughout, bringing with it an abundance of life. All sorts of wildlife and greenery can be seen all around; There is no other place like UNCA.

The Grimoire of Persuasion

Gabbi Paluzzi created a grimoire, or magic textbook, full of imaginative "spells" to be used in the art of persuasion, such as a respect enchantment, a compassion incantation, an an empathy invocation.

Your First Year Experience at UNC Asheville

Gilgamesh Re-Imagined Podcast

Reading the Epic of Gilgamesh in Humanities 124 is a rite of passage for UNC Asheville students. Students Jackson Coley, Kyle Handy, Eric Dunbar, Mackenzie Schroder and Samantha Schroder took a multimedia approach to retelling the historic tale, creating a podcast and a series of illustrations to bring the story to life for a modern audience.

Listen to the Podcast

The Third-Eye of the Artist

LANG 120 student Mia Feinsilber used acrylics—a relatively new medium to her— to detail her experience with artistic expression. "Acrylic was a challenge for me because I have viewed it as a rather basic medium. This piece serves to undermine my preconception of its beauty," Feinsilber said in her artist's statement.

Ableism and Climate Change

“. . .they care about the environment, but they feel excluded, shamed, and expendable.”

In her essay on ableism, the discrimination against people with disabilities, and its intersection with climate change, student Keely Savage explores "eco-ableism."

"An example of how disabled voices are left out of the conversation is the anti-plastic-straw trend that surfaced in 2018," Seely wrote. "For many disabled people, plastic straws are necessary for drinking. Plastic straws provide flexibility, which is not present in the glass, metal, and silicone alternatives, and the hardness of glass and metal straws can pose a safety risk. In addition to that, cleaning reusable straws is a difficult task for some disabled people (Danovich). So, guilt-tripping can make disabled people feel like they aren’t doing enough—that because they aren’t able to participate in a trend that they are in the wrong. But how can you be in the wrong when you’re using a necessary tool for daily life?"

Wealth Inequality: Born to be a Pauper?

In this video project, student Austin Campbell takes a satyrical look at generational wealth inequality and its historical impact on art.

Vocation And Justification: The Myth Of The Dying English Degree

"In reality, it is the myths about the English Major that cause the most grief to prospective students, and an English Major can find both fulfillment and success even through following their passions," writes student Riley Johnson, who also composed and recorded an original song to accompany her essay.

Ancient Terra Preta Gardening in Present Time

The students in Professor of Biology David Clarke's Humanities 124 class spent the semester creating a terra preta garden, an ancient gardening method creating rich, black soil by adding a mixture of charcoal, bone, broken pottery, compost and manure.

"When Dr. Clarke announced that our class would be doing a garden project, I was confused and taken aback. I was excited, as I’ve never really gardened before, but also nervous as to what this project would entail," said student Jessica Nilson. "Now, as we are closing out the semester, I reflect onto the garden project with fond memories. There was something so special about getting out of my dorm room and going into the garden, being able to connect with my peers in person, and feeling the fulfillment of hard work. . . . I distinctly remember one of my classmates and I weeding and talking about terra preta, which probably wouldn’t have happened if we were exclusively over zoom. It was so beneficial to have those face to face conversations- not only for my understanding of the class material, but also for my mental health and motivation."

"To have an outlet for physical creation as an element of this class was extremely beneficial, and oftentimes when working I would think about the ways in which we as a human population have worked the land and created productive agricultural earth throughout human history," said student Alana Merrell.

"There is an interconnectedness to physical labor, a familiarity to working with my hands just as my father did growing up on an apple orchard or my ancestors did when they first settled this area."