First-Year Experience

First-year undergraduate students have several unique opportunities to explore disciplines, interact with faculty, and make lasting friendships with peers. Those include First-Year Interest Groups, Academic Residential Communities, and the Common Reading program.


Undergraduate First-Year Interest Groups

First-Year Interest Groups (FIGs) bring students with similar interests together to collectively explore a theme framed by two lecture classes. Incoming first-year students experience their first term at the University of Oregon alongside other FIG students, a faculty member, and a student mentor. Take advantage of a FIG to dive into our disciplines. Some of the FIGs affiliated with the College of Design include Food and the Garden, Inside Architecture, and Portable Life Museum.

First-Year Interest Groups


Academic Residential Communities

Academic Residential Communities (ARCs) are an opportunity to be a part of a group of passionate, committed students who want to learn about the same things you do and work together to solve problems facing our communities and the world.

Academic Residential Community


Housing Options

Visit University Housing to learn about the wide variety of housing options.


Common Reading

Building community, enriching curriculum, and engaging research through the shared reading of an important book is what the Common Reading program at the UO is all about. Each year, the Division of Undergraduate Studies selects a book that all incoming first-year students are asked to read. Sometimes it's a work of fiction, sometimes it's nonfiction; but it's always thought-provoking and related to several disciplines.

Learn more about the Common Reading program, how books are selected, what books were chosen recently, and the related activities and learning opportunities.