From an intellectual standpoint, teaching a freshman seminar may be beneficial to faculty members, forcing them to return to the basics of their academic discipline, while allowing them to pursue their personal interests in the field.
Rosen compares his desire to teach freshman with military sergeants who always want the 18-year-old recruits because of their enthusiasm.
"Freshman are wonderful because they don't buy any of your assumptions," Rosen says. "They don't know the established rhetoric of the discipline."
And freshman seminars may be a forum to develop new classes that might later be offered in the department.
"Many professors have a course up their sleeve that they haven't quite gotten the nerve to do," Rosen says.
And Fleming says the seminars often generate specific interest in a given discipline, providing incentives for departments to offer first rate seminars.
"The English department is getting a lot out of [seminars]," he says. "We're generating an interest in literary topics."
With a small number of students--roughly 15--and a free flowing seminar format, professors say they relish the opportunity to teach a freshman seminar.
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