It's never too early to state your interest in the y:1 program. Though we're still working out the details for the 2012-13 academic year, we'd love to hear from you and know of your interest. The first step is to apply to Sweet Briar. Then, fill out the form for y:1.

Sweet Briar College’s y:1 program is an exciting pilot program that offers participating students a head start on their college careers. The program is specifically designed to promote first-year students’ intellectual and academic engagement by offering them the opportunity to participate in a series of coordinated activities.

Students selected to participate in the program complete a summer reading-and-response assignment; participate in an orientation program of discussions, collaboration, and presentations; and enroll in small, coordinated first-year seminars and participate in year-long assessment activities – all tied to the college’s annual Common Reading book, which for 2012 is The History of Money: from Sandstone to Cyberspace by Jack Weatherford.

Weatherford brings a cultural anthropologist's wide-angled perspective to this illuminating investigation of money's role in shaping human affairs. He identifies three great mutations in the story of money. The first began with the invention of coins in the Anatolian kingdom of Lydia 3000 years ago, sparking a monetary revolution that underpinned classical Greek and Roman civilizations. Next, family-owned, credit-giving banks of Renaissance Italy ushered in the modern world capitalist system, which swept away feudalism and abetted the expansion of European hegemony to the Americas. In the third major transition, predicts Weatherford (Savages and Civilization), the current age of paper money will give way to an era of cybermoney, or electronic cash, in which transactions are conducted via the Internet and by other forms of electronic transfer. Full of forgotten lore and provocative opinions (e.g., harmful inflation is identified as the dominant monetary theme of our century), and sprinkled with allusions to Voltaire, Goethe, L. Frank Baum and Gertrude Stein, this intriguing selective survey will captivate even readers with no particular yen for financial knowledge. (Publisher's Weekly)

The y:1 program is also designed to develop students’ technological skills and digital sophistication. Thus, every student selected to participate in the program receives a free iPad loaded with applications and with a digital version of the Common Reading book.

The faculty who participate in the program are selected on the basis of their demonstrated excellence in teaching and on their interest in working collaboratively with their colleagues to create a challenging and exciting program that guides students in developing the reading, research, and analytical skills that they will employ throughout their college education.