Summer Reading

Summer 2025

Dear First-Year Student,
Welcome to Siena College and to the First Year at Siena Seminar.
The Seminar is a two semester, writing intensive course required of all first-year students and must be passed in order to graduate. The overall goal of the Seminar is to prepare you for the intellectual life of college, particularly in regards to:

• how to read critically,
• how to engage with a text,
• how to articulate an informed position on big questions,
• how to write clearly and persuasively,
• how to voice an opinion in a classroom conversation,
• how to make connections among the readings you are doing and the subjects you are studying, as well as connections between Siena and the outside world.

In addition, the Seminar will introduce you to the Franciscan heritage that is unique to Siena.

You will remain with the same faculty member and classmates for both semesters. The course is organized around four key Franciscan concerns foundational to the Core Curriculum.

For the fall semester, they are:  Heritage and the Natural World.
For the spring semester, they are:  Diversity and Social Justice.

For each Franciscan concern, there are a few interdisciplinary readings common to all sections of the course. Individual faculty choose the remaining readings and an overall theme to bring coherence to their sections.  The lives and stories of St. Francis and St. Clare are interwoven throughout the year.

The required summer reading for the incoming Class of 2029 is an excerpt from Geoffrey L. Cohen’s book, Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides. Cohen is a professor of psychology and the James G. March Professor of Organizational Studies in Education and Business at Stanford University. Beverly Daniel Tatum, retired President of Spelman College, declared the book “a masterpiece of social psychology… fundamentally useful to anyone who wants to bring out the best in themselves and others.”