Expanding Minds in an Expanding Universe

Welcome to First Year Experience “Big History” at Dominican University of California. Our program invites you on an immense journey through time, to witness the first moments of our universe, the birth of stars and planets, the formation of life on Earth, the dawn of human consciousness, and the ever-unfolding story of humans as Earth’s dominant species. Explore the inevitable question of what it means to be human and our momentous role in shaping possible futures for our planet.

ENGAGED LEARNING Engaged Learning First Year Experience "Big History" has a lot of active learning components: taking content that could seem very abstract and making it tangible. We try to keep the factual information relevant, but not weigh the students down with it.	FACULTY COLLABORATION Faculty Collaboration Big History is living content. It develops all the time. Faculty get together not only every summer to develop the content; we meet every week to discuss the course, to discuss the content, to discuss new science and new developments. We are living the idea of collective learning, which is one of the main ideas in Big History.	CRITICAL THINKING Critical Thinking Our aim with First Year Experience "Big History" is to make the courses as interactive and as engaging as possible. It is definitely less about lecturing in the course and more about involving students either in personal reflection or in discussion.