First-Year Seminar
Words and Numbers are your first-year seminar classes.
At Lewis & Clark, you’ll take one faculty-led foundational seminar per semester. These small classes (19–25 students) are designed to help you develop the reading, writing, discussion, and analytical skills you will need to succeed in college and for life. One of your two courses will focus on interpreting the meaning and significance of texts (CORE 120: Words), the other on interpreting quantitative information and models (CORE 121: Numbers). These are not simply writing and math classes; rather, these courses allow you to explore a specialized topic of particular interest with a faculty member and a small group of students.
Words teaches students to explore the meaning and significance of texts via close reading and analysis, and to express that analysis in writing.
Numbers teaches students to interpret quantitative information presented in various forms and contexts; to understand the logical structure of quantitative arguments; and to use quantitative models, theories, and data to simplify, explain, and make predictions.
Piper McCoy Harmon BA ’26More about PiperThe community fostered by Lewis & Clark’s mathematics faculty makes the major an amazing, uplifting, and interesting experience.
Cody Bowen-Crosby BA ’22More about CodyDon’t pick your school based on a figure from some website; pick your school off of where you think you’ll be happiest and where you want to plant the seeds to start a professional career.
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First-Years Take the Wheel on Campus Transportation
In a course built around a real-world problem, students collaborated to design transportation solutions that could help move Lewis & Clark toward its climate goals.
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