a holistic approach

Animated by Notre Dame’s vision of Catholic education, the Moreau First Year Experience (FYE) course was introduced in 2015 to build upon the premise that personal development is best pursued in the context of a community in which diverse perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds converge to heal, unify, enlighten, and transform the world. 

The Moreau course has always been a collaborative effort between the Office of Undergraduate Education and the Division of Student Affairs, designed to help students explore fundamental questions about identity, relationships, and their role in the world. 

reconceiving the Moreau First-Year Experience

In 2022, Notre Dame launched an initiative to rethink the Moreau First-Year Experience to better support students’ personal, intellectual, and spiritual development. In consultation with the Office of Strategic Planning and Institutional Research, a committee of faculty and staff leaders conducted extensive research and benchmarking to explore new approaches.

Based on their recommendations, inaugural faculty director William C. Mattison III, a professor in the Department of Theology, formed two committees to shape the new program.

• Curriculum Committee: Tasked with redesigning the Moreau First-Year Seminar to integrate intellectual reflection on ultimate questions about God, relationships, and the human person with practical applications of living well.

• Co-Curricular Committee: Focused on identifying engaging, out-of-classroom experiences that complement the course curriculum, expand students' imaginations, foster community building, and serve as a means of putting the course topics to practice. 

These collaborative efforts produced a successful pilot version of the new Moreau First-Year Seminar in Fall 2024, with 20% of first-year students and a cohort of faculty participating.

the new Moreau First-Year Seminar

In Fall 2025, the Moreau First Year Experience will fully transition into the reconceived Moreau Program. A significant part of this transition will be the introduction of the new Moreau First-Year Seminar (FYS 10101) for all undergraduate first-year students and the deferral of the FYS 10102 course until later in the undergraduate educational experience.

The new Moreau First-Year Seminar adopts many of the fundamental principles of the former Moreau First Year Experience (e.g. common syllabus, small class sizes, a focus on holistic development, and a goal of fostering a true sense of community) while introducing new curricula, formats, pedagogies, and lessons learned from the fall 2024 pilot.

The new course will provide students with an opportunity to study and practice living well. Nourished by enduring texts, contemporary authors from our own intellectual community, the perspectives of instructors and peers, and co-curricular experiences, students will engage perennial questions about our identity as human persons, and our relationships with each other, the world, and God.

In serving as both an introduction and capstone to a holistic undergraduate education, the reconceptualized Moreau Program is designed to enhance the intellectual formation students encounter through coursework and research as well as the character formation students experience outside of the classroom.

By combining intellectual exploration with personal development, the Moreau Program embodies Notre Dame’s commitment to offering an undergraduate education that nurtures the mind, body, and spirit.