Living-learning communities have long been a fixture on many college campuses. In recent years, though, those communities have become as particular as students’ tastes. Dorm suites and floors focused on robotics and Harry Potter are popping up alongside the mainstay “first-year experience” communities.
In part, the move is a bid to keep upperclassmen on the campus by letting students who share very specific interests live together, says Karen Kurotsuchi Inkelas, author of the “National Study of Living-Learning Programs,” last released in 2007.
“I think what you see in housing more and more these days is just an overall catering toward students’ interests and whims, trying to keep students happy,” Ms. Inkelas says.
As colleges become more responsive to students’ interests, they are also finding ways to link those interests with activities that are both academically and socially engaging.
A Penthouse ‘Playground’
At Ball State University, students from all majors have the option to live in a residence hall with a newly renovated penthouse designed to encourage students to produce films and projects in emerging media.
The university spent $60,000 remodeling the penthouse in one of the university’s main residence complexes to add a green screen, video equipment, editing software, a high-definition television, and surround sound. The renovation was completed in November.
“It’s like the whole penthouse is a playground,” says Graeme J. Wilson, a freshman telecommunications major who is one of about 130 students living in the complex. Mr. Wilson says that though he has not yet produced any films there, he plans to do so before the semester ends.
Jonathan B. Huer, director of emerging technologies and media development at Ball State, says the college needed a living space where students could have the freedom to use media equipment like video cameras, a practice generally restricted in campus housing because of privacy concerns.
“We needed to create an environment where students could explore and learn all the boundaries and set their own rules,” Mr. Huer says.
Residents of the emerging-media center determined that they could shoot video in other students’ rooms as long as they had permission, and residents are allowed to shoot projects during finals week as long as their noise does not carry more than three doors away.
“The biggest challenge is the balance between what the students want and what we think would be right for the students,” Mr. Huer says. “We really want to listen to the students.”
Learning by Design
At the University of Vermont, where living-learning communities have existed since 1973, students design their own groups based on their interests. Results include an anime-themed center this year and a Harry Potter-themed house that will focus on social justice for the 2010-11 academic year. That house will encourage students to explore “how magic is symbolic for an individual’s ability to change the world,” according to the student proposal.
But not just any idea flies. Students have to develop learning objectives and plan extracurricular activities for their peers in the residence halls. About 580 students live in Vermont’s living-learning communities, out of the 5,000 students who live on the campus.
One community returning to Vermont this fall is the Food for Thought group, which aims to help students learn about and practice healthy eating habits. The group’s program director, Molly G. Campbell, a sophomore majoring in political science and economics, says she wanted to create a program that fit her specific interest in maintaining a healthy lifestyle while in college.
Ms. Campbell shares that interest not only with others in the Food for Thought group, but also with residents of other learning communities.
“We had a dinner with the magic suite from upstairs, and we prepared a meal,” says Ms. Campbell, who plans to return next year to lead the community again. “The magic suite went around and did tableside magic, then the film suite showed The Prestige and held a discussion afterward.”
John L. Sama, director of the Living/Learning Center at Vermont, says that allowing students to design their own communities teaches students how to be leaders—an experience he knows well, having served as a learning-community leader when he was a student in the 1980s. Though the structure and proposal processes have not changed much since he was a student, Mr. Sama said there have been more communities proposed and designed around students’ cultural identities, whether those include specific racial status or even the culture of science fiction and fantasy.
As when Mr. Sama led an emergency-medical-themed community as a student, the structure of the learning centers require that student leaders decide whom they want to have live in their group.
“They review the applications and make decisions about who gets into the program—you have to be able to do so ethically and be able to justify that,” says Mr. Sama. “Sometimes living with students you are trying to lead can be challenging, so there are lots of opportunities for growth there.”
Ms. Inkelas says colleges are beginning to require students to be more intentional about their activities in residence halls and to collaborate with faculty members who will help guide the learning process.
Connecting With Faculty
When the Georgia Institute of Technology was given a set of dormitories built for the 1996 Olympics, college officials decided to start the ThinkBig@Tech living-learning communities. The communities, which began in 2007, are intended to consider what students and faculty members want and provide intellectual enrichment outside the classroom. Faculty members propose ideas for about 160 students who live in the communities, with themes including humor, robotics, space colonization, and the science of food.
Dana E. Hartley, director of undergraduate studies, says the “casual” learning style of the communities resulted from students’ requests to have more “nonacademic interaction” with the faculty. While faculty members do not live in the housing, they do meet weekly with residents to have coffee and discussions, and they have a larger event every other week. For their time, faculty members receive the equivalent of a month of their summer salary.
Students living in the communities sometimes seem more engaged in the learning that happens in residence than in the classroom, Ms. Hartley says. In the fall, for example, one community decided to read a book based on their residents’ interest in the subject of evolution. The students agreed to read one chapter of the book each week, and then discuss that chapter at their weekly coffee hour.
“Eighty percent of the students showed up with the chapter read, and you can’t even get that sometimes in a class,” Ms. Hartley said. “Students were really doing this because they wanted to. They were enjoying it, so the faculty were enjoying it.”
