FIGs: First Year Interest Groups

There is much research to demonstrate that college students are more likely to succeed if they connect closely during their first year with faculty and other students by engaging together in common goals. Often this occurs in the form of a "first year experience" course where students learn basic survival skills of college life, while studying socially and personally meaningful issues. These types of courses lead to increased retention from the freshman to the sophomore year and help students build relationships that increase their involvements on campus (Gardner, 1999).

At the University of Michigan we have a unique program that helps first-year students engage in the process of maturing both academically and emotionally. It is called FIGs, and it focuses on issues of social diversity and social justice.

A Sampling of FIGs Courses:

• Democracy, Diversity, and Community
• Breaking Gender and Race Barriers in Brazil
• Race, Racism, and Cultural Diversity in the Francophone World
• Social Inequality: Race, Labor, and Detroit
• The Politics and Culture of Race in the United States Since World War II
• Critical Moments: the Psychology of Negotiation and Conflict Transformation
• Justice For All? Difference and Oppressioon in U.S. Society
• Deconstructing Whiteness: Alternative Perspectives on Race, Class, and Gender in the American Experience
• Race Underground: Prejudice in America
• Writing and Speaking about Cultural Communities, Ethnicity, and Imposed Categories (Race, Gender, Class, and So Forth)
• Psychology and the Study of Racial Differences
• Black Multiculturalism
• I Too Sing America: A Psychology of Race and Cultural Diversity

To Get Involved Contact:

• Kelly Maxwell kmax@umich.edu, 743-936-1875
• Charles Behling cbehling@umich.edu, 734-936-1875