WELCOME to US 101, First-Year Seminar! Our hope is through through the seminar, our students, (aka -YOU !) gain critical thinking, reading, and writing skills while exploring issues that are relevant to our society!

This semester our focus will revolve around the Town Hall Meeting. What is the Town Hall Meeting all About?

During the Spring 2009 Town Hall Meeting, students from US 101 will facilitate an evening of discussion and awareness-raising on topics pulled from The Soloist. This book explores the nature of interconnectedness amongst joblessness, homelessness, and mental illness. The Spring 2009 Town Hall Meeting will allow our US 101 students to discuss these and other related contemporary issues.

This discussion will start here! Via “blogging” our students will have the opportunity to discuss ideas with students from other US 101 sections. The responses will help you reflect upon your own thinking while examining and responding to your peers’ writing. Through your responses, you will learn how to better articulate your ideas while examining and and incorporating multiple perspectives.

**Some notes about the blog format**

All assignments should be typed in a traditional word processing program that offers a spelling and grammar check. Please treat all responses and posts as traditional academic work. This means that your writing should be structurally sound with no more than FIVE grammatical (structural) or mechanical (spelling and punctuation) errors.