Meliora Humanities Seminars
Going to college provides students with the opportunity to take courses that address important issues and explore new disciplines that are not typically covered in high school. At Rochester, the Meliora Seminars are small, selective courses that allow first-year students to study fascinating questions about being human in a complex world: What is the nature of democracy? How do we communicate with one another? What can art, literature, and film teach us about climate change?
The goal of the Meliora Seminars is to create a collaborative and rich intellectual experience for students as they begin their academic careers at Rochester. The Meliora Seminars are designed for incoming first-year students, and do not presume prior experience in the field.
Each Meliora Seminar is unique, but common features of the seminars include:
- Explicit attention to the relevance of the course material to contemporary social issues
- Community engagement through on-or-off campus dialogue with individuals or groups working on issues addressed in the seminars
- Reading-and-discussion small class formats of twelve to fifteen students
Every one of the Meliora Seminars, which count as regular, graded four-credit courses, can be used in clusters, minors, and majors.