What are Learning Communities?
A Learning Community is a small group of new students who take two or more classes in common, including a First Year Seminar that serves as the hub or “home base” of the community.
80% of new students choose to participate in a Learning Community!
Two types of Learning Communities
Program-based Learning Communities: Students in certain majors have natural Learning Communities as part of their program. These include dance, engineering, music, and theatre majors.
Seminar-based Learning Communities: Students participate in Learning Communities centered upon a first-year seminar that focuses on issues relating to enhancing success in college. Many of these spend part of their time in activities relating to a special theme or focus.
Common Text for '08–'09: Freakonomics
Common Text is a book selection that all new students are asked to read. Through discussions of this book during your first year, you will grasp a better understanding of what it means to read actively and critically, make judgments about the validity of what you read, and discuss challenging, sometimes conflicting, ideas.
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, may cause you to think twice about everything you've ever learned about economics and the way the world works. Or maybe not. You decide.
Benefits of participating in a Learning Community
- Make new friends faster
- You share a few classes, so you instantly have access to potential study groups
- Adjust to college quickly by having fun while actively learning about campus resources, college life, and academic success skills
- Provides you with personal attention from a caring Learning Community seminar instructor
- More of the Learning Community students go on to become sophomores than do non-Learning Community students
2008 Learning Communities with a special theme (for any major)
- Campus Recreation
- Chorus (for non-music majors)
- College Success for Commuters
- Concert Band (for non-music majors)
- Exploring Mind (ESP, Lucid Dreams, Distant Healing)
- Global Warming & Climate Changes
- African American Women in Leadership
- Gulf Coast After Katrina: Service Learning
- Human Behavior: Self & Society
- Our Common Culture: The American Mosaic
- Outdoor Adventures
- Preparing for Leadership Through Service Learning
- Psychology of Hip Hop Culture
- Sports & Society
- Student Clubs & Campus Involvement
- Study Abroad: Getting to Know Other Cultures
- Support Services for Students with Disabilities
- Understanding Personality Through the MBTI
- Wright Talk; Wright Write
2008 Honors Learning Communities (for Honors students only)
- Aspects of China
- Education in a Democracy (for ed majors)
- Election Rhetoric
- Engineered for Success (for engineering majors)
- Modern Political Experiments
- Pre-Med (for students planning on medical school)
- Service, Justice, & Society
