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Your First Year Experience


You are here.

Every student's academic journey at Guilford begins with reflection, community building, and goal setting — actions that you take with the support and encouragement of your CAPE Adviser.

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Your adviser is here for you.

From day one, each student connects with their CAPE advisers, who guide them through their academic advising, career advising, and life exploration, and are the professors of their Reflection Seminar class.

Integrative Experience

Take your first steps on your four year journey of exploration with your first year seminar course while working with your CAPE advisors to develop a schedule with courses from departments across the college.

Learning to Speak UP

Speak UP is campus-wide effort is designed to improve students' public presentation skills while they learn how to advocate for others.


Wonder. Question. Initiate.

Your first course at Guilford, called "First Year Seminar," will allow students to get acclimated to campus, begin building their college experience, and establish a foundation to help prepare them for the future.  Students will take this class with a faculty member and a CAPE Advisor so they can explore both an academic topic of their choosing and focus on success skills.  In this course students will:
  • Begin active engagement with the community of Guilford.
  • Develop a lens to help make foundational connections between learning and experiences.
  • Develop academic success strategies to achieve course goals and as foundations for future academic experiences at Guilford. In particular:
    - Skills for collaborating with others
    - Skills for communicating their work in small groups and with larger audiences
    - Reading skills and strategies
    - Time management
    - Note-taking and study skills and strategies
    - Information literacy and digital competencies
    - Persist in educational pursuits, as demonstrated by consistent progress or improvements in academic work.