First Year Seminar

The First Year Seminar (FYS) is an exciting three credit course (BADM-1101) for first-year business students to explore the nature of scholarship, think about important ideas in business, and foster intellectual and personal growth while adapting to the rigor of college-level courses. The program offers small seminars (approximately 20 students) that create a supportive learning and service community. Throughout the program, students strengthen critical academic reading and writing skills necessary for success in college and explore intellectual links to a variety of business disciplines, including global public policy. FYS is open to McDonough’s first year and sophomore transfer students and fulfills the Integrated Writing requirement with an emphasis on strengthening students’ academic and business writing skills.

An integral aspect of the FYS course is the Social Impact Consulting Project, which challenges students – organized as teams – to develop strategic business solutions and recommendations for contemporary issues facing a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C. Faculty and advanced undergraduates coach each team, and the finalists present their strategic recommendations to executives from the client organization.

During the semester, students in all FYS courses meet multiple times, as a cohort, to hear lectures by external experts and members of faculty at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, who will illustrate how scholarly research in different fields can inform important questions in international business, public policy, and society. At least one of these lectures will be delivered by the head of the client organization of the program’s Social Impact Consulting Project.

The FYS Program offers several seminars during Fall 2024:

Fall 2024 Semester Seminars:

• Cooking the Books: The Ethics of Financial Reporting, Kirsten Anderson, Ph.D.
• Heroes and Villains: Character and Leadership in a Global Context, Robert J. Bies, Ph.D.
• The Real Estate Game, Matthew Cypher, Ph.D., and Ferdinando Monte, Ph.D.
• Grand Strategy: Conceptual Foundations in Strategic Thought, Arthur Dong, Ph.D.
• Competing in a Flat World, Ricardo Ernst, Ph.D.
• Marketing in a Global and Connected World, Ronald Goodstein, Ph.D.
• Framing and Solving Hard Problems, Renée Rinehart Kathawalla, Ph.D.
• Psychology of Big Data, Jennifer Logg, Ph.D.
• Bridging the Divide: Leading Across Business, Government, and Society, Nicholas Lovegrove, MBA, MPP
• Data, Technology, and Critical Thinking in the Digital World, Gregory Lyon, Ph.D.
• Psychology at Work: Individual Differences, Teamwork & Workplace Outcomes, Michael O’Leary, Ph.D.
• Entrepreneurship and the Jesuit Tradition, Jeff Reid, MBA
• The Future of Work, Eliot Sherman, Ph.D.

For additional information about the program and courses, please refer to the First Year Seminar brochure or email us.