Members of Undergraduate Student Government (USG) Academic Assembly suggested ideas to improve first-year seminars at their meeting last night.

Freshman seminar revisions will be a major topic at University Faculty Senate's March meeting, where the assembly will report their ideas, said Academic Assembly President D. Josh Troxell.

"I know this is a very hot topic, which is why we're starting extremely early," Troxell said.

Dawn Rupp, senator for the Eberly College of Science, said the seminars should have an introduction to all majors within the college, not just focus on one topic throughout the semester.

Mark Levin, senator for the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, agreed that this would be helpful for students.

"It would get people thinking about majors sooner rather than ending up in DUS [Division of Undergraduate Studies] for years," he said.

This raised the question of who would teach the seminars if the professor must have knowledge of all the individual majors in a particular college.

Levin suggested professors should rotate through sections of the seminars, each providing their expertise in selected areas to a class of students.

Some assembly members suggested making the seminars uniform throughout all colleges to introduce students to university resources.

But Kelly Rossi, representative from the College of Health and Human Development, worried that seminar class sizes will inflate and effectiveness will be lost if seminars are more like a general lecture.

"It's supposed to be an adjusting-type class," Rossi said. She added that she made a good friend in her freshman seminar because the class was small.

Lauren Applegate, senator for the College of Communications, said there should be a uniform time frame for all seminars. She said her seminar met for four hours each week for six weeks, while other seminars met for a shorter time every week.

"It was just painful," she said.

The assembly will continue their seminar discussion at future meetings.

In other business last night, the assembly approved Dina Ross as an associate chief justice of the USG Supreme Court. Ross joins three other voting associate chief justices on the court.