With the opening of The Quad this fall, five Living Learning Communities will be lodged in the accompanying townhouses for students to live with others that have similar interests.
The Quad’s Living Learning Communities will include Bauer House, Impact, Languages and Culture (Chinese, French and Spanish), Minority Male Leadership and Women in STEM. These communities are focused on bringing together students who have similar interests to each other.
Students already involved in Impact highly recommend the experience, as it fosters community with fellow members. Impact’s service goes beyond the Living Learning Communities, collaborating with other service organizations such as the Metropolitan Volunteer Program.
“It definitely gives me a community,” said computer science sophomore Annabelle Poer. “Any service event I go to I know at least five people there.”
Applications to participate in one of The Quad’s Living Learning Communities this fall opened on Feb. 5 and will remain active with the application priority deadline ending on March 13.
From these communities, Impact and Minority Male Leadership are preexisting, with Impact currently hosted in Cougar Place and Minority Male Leadership in Bayou Oaks.
All of The Quad’s Living Learning Communities will share the same objective of creating a sense belonging in the community and at the University, according to a newsletter released in January.
Each community encourages students to get more invested in the topics they’re already interested in. For example, students participating in Bauer House will be allowed to live with people pursuing a similar degree and have networking access to their peers, faculty and staff.
“Our hallway has turned really close-knit,” Poer said. “Since we all live in the same hallway, we have a really good community there.”
The Languages and Culture House is an outlier among the other Living Learning Communities, combining students who speak Spanish, French and Chinese.
Beyond the variety of languages, the community will have students who are in the process of learning their respective language and native speakers.
The requirements to live in The Quad’s Living Learning Communities are to have sophomore standing or higher, be at least 20 years old by Sept. 1, and be a returning resident who participates in priority room selection. Exceptions might be made allowing first-year students in certain communities.
“I do enjoy doing service at this University, so I thought it would be really cool to get a community,” Poer said.
Some students believe the experience of participating in the Living Learning Communities expands beyond housing and becomes a way to build close relationships.
From decorating each other’s rooms to eating dinner together in the dining hall, the peers in her community have become family, Poer said.
“This is the first year I think Impact has gotten really close outside of doing service, we just hang out,” Poer said.