Welcome to the Website of the College Seminar, the signature course of Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters!

Students in the College Seminar experience the very best of Arts and Letters: the sheer joy associated with exploring the life of the mind and asking the great questions that give meaning to life; cultivating those intellectual virtues and formal capacities that are prized whatever career path you might pursue; and gaining a sense of the way the arts, humanities, and social sciences approach an engaging and complex issue.

The College Seminar is an ideal forum for the development of future leaders. With its integration of classroom debates and oral examinations, it is designed to help students develop the capacities to formulate clear questions, listen carefully and attentively, explore ideas through dialogue, argue for and against differing positions, and express their thoughts eloquently and persuasively.

Each time I have taught the College Seminar, it has been a delightful and meaningful class. Students engage a topic that matters to them. They have great discussions in an intimate setting. They discover how much they are able to learn from one another, and they develop deep social and intellectual friendships that will last a lifetime.

The College Seminar will be a special opportunity for you. Enjoy it, and learn!

Mark W. Roche
I. A. O’Shaughnessy Dean