Learning Communities for First Year Students

Setting the PACE for College Success

Learning communities provide students with the opportunity to develop friendships with like-minded students and faculty, participate in out-of-classroom activities that relate to your learning and promote peer academic support.

Instead of making your way through those first classes, tests, papers and projects alone, you will be a part of a community of learners and have the support of friends.

Learning communities set the PACE for college success by focusing on:

Partnerships: Encourage partnerships between faculty, students and staff that create curricular connections among courses and ideas, and to teach skills in meaningful contexts.

Active learning: Engage students in active learning (Key Cognitive Strategies - Intellectual Openness, Inquisitiveness, analysis, reasoning-argument-proof, Interpretation, precision-accuracy, problem solving)

Community: Build a supportive and inclusive community that respects diversity of ideas, talents, and cultures

Engagement: Increase student engagement on campus

Tell me more

Learning Communities:

  • Involves a small common cohort of students allowing them to make both academic and social connections as maturing college learners
  • Capitalizes on a robust partnership between academic affairs and student support services; faculty members, student life professionals, academic advisors, librarians, and even students – may assume teaching roles in learning communities
  • Explicitly designs opportunities for integrative learning for the purpose of creating curricular connections among courses and ideas, and to teach skills in meaningful contexts
  • Incorporates additional co-curricular features and other elements that take students out of the classroom. These activities are planned to extend students' learning community coursework, strengthen social ties among students, provide experiential learning opportunities, and broaden the curricular themes of the academic programs

Reasons to Join

Students that participate in learning community, on average, are more likely to

  1. Return to college the second year
  2. Have higher GPAs
  3. Be actively involved on campus
  4. Spend more time on their academics
  5. Be satisfied with their college experience
  6. Understand the connection between classroom learning to the "real world"

Here's How to Join:

  • Indicate your interest on Housing Survey (if it's a residential LC) or
  • Indicate your interest on Registration and Orientation Survey
  • Indicate your interest on the "Enroll Me Now" form

Students in a technology class