First Year Experience
The First Year Experience is an academic program designed to fully integrate new students into the academic and cultural community of the College. All of the courses offered in this program give new students an opportunity to work closely with top-level faculty. FYE is also designed to help you meet other new students early on, which will help smooth your transition to college. The program also teaches you the skills needed for success throughout your academic career. Fostering these connections and skills in the first year is crucial to success at the College, graduation, and beyond. To delve more deeply into the First Year Experience courses, please visit our Courses section of the webpage.
For 2021, the College of Charleston's FYE program has been listed among the top in the U.S. by U.S. News & World Report.
FYE in the News
- FYE Offers Lessons Outside the Classroom
- Financial Literacy Class Capitalizes Returns as Online Course
- CofC Course Explores Charleston’s Role in Presidential Politics
- College of Charleston students hot on trail of medieval Muslim scholar and the food he ate
- Charleston as A Classroom: A First-Year Seminar with Dale Rosengarten
- FYE Professor featured for talk, "To Touch Impossible Things: Designing Haptic Sensations for Virtual Worlds"
- FYE Professor wins South Carolina's Folk Heritage Award for traditional arts advocacy
- Spring 2019 Faculty Lecture Series Featuring FYE Professor and Poet Laureate of SC
- FYE Inspires Latin American and Caribbean Studies Major
- Chef Delights Students with Mouth-Watering Lecture
- FitCatz: A First-Year Experience to Remember
- First-Year Students Face Ultimate Test: Running a Marathon
See what past (and current) courses are doing!
- Spanish Panorama: The Culture, Language, and Geography of Spain (Google Slides)
- Beyond the Grave (Kizoa)
- Photography and Memory (Twitter video)
- Special OPS Therapy Tactics (YouTube)
- Roads of Silk, Streets of Water (YouTube)
- Sex, Politics, and American Culture (YouTube)
- China to a Tea: An Introduction to Chinese Culture, History, and Religion (Google Slides)
Students in China to a Tea: An Introduction to Chinese Culture, History,
and Religion celebrate the Chinese New Year with a tea ceremony.
If you are an entering first-year student at the College of Charleston and feel that you should be exempt from the First-Year Experience requirement, download the waiver form and either email it to fye@cofc.edu or deliver it to the Lightsey Basement Suite B53.
AP, IB, or dual-enrollment courses are not considered when applying for an FYE Waiver.