Five new check boxes appeared on incoming first-year students’ housing deposit forms last April, bringing the total number of living-learning communities at the University of St. Thomas to nine.
The first-year students that opted into the LLC program now participate either in one of the four previously-existing communities — Sustainability, Aquinas Scholars Honors, Tommies Do Well(ness) and Catholic Studies — or in one of the five debuting this year: Pathways to Engineering, Muslim-Christian Dialogue, Justice and Peace, COJO Mojo and Business for the Common Good.
The topic of each LLC differs, but the structure of each program is the same: first-year students with similar interests and majors live together in residence halls and learn together in certain shared classes. Some communities are housed in the co-ed Murray Hall, while others are split between female and male residence halls.
Signing up for the Justice and Peace LLC also registers a first-year student for the introductory Theology 101 and Justice and Peace Studies 250 classes, for example.
The community’s resident adviser, sophomore Andrew Varga, said the LLC gives students the chance to take what they learned in class into the real world through service projects or in-depth discussions about social justice.
“We’re all living together, so we can have these civilized conversations about stuff (that) is important in modern-day America and the world,” Varga said. “With a group like this that can actually talk about stuff and come up with some reasonable ideas, eventually maybe they can … get some stuff changed.”
Hannah Brodersen, the resident adviser for the engineering community, said her 21 residents (four of which are girls) do their homework together for their shared math, engineering and computer science classes every night. This constant proximity to people with similar passions has already helped the group form a tight-knit bond, she explained.
“They’ve already formed a family,” Brodersen said, adding that one night her residents decided to watch the movie The Martian because it was science-related. “Something that I love about them is that they are very self-motivated people. They chose this community because they like engineering and they like science.”
One resident in the COJO Mojo LLC, which houses communication and journalism majors, echoed Brodersen’s idea that the community creates fast, strong friendships.
“You’re thrown into college life, and you automatically have this group of people that we were just happy to find,” first-year student Grace Wallin said. “And everyone’s been so nice and inclusive, and we’ve had a lot of fun. I think that has what has made us become close too — that feeling of camaraderie, that we’re all in it.”
RAs explained that all the communities provide a good environment for friendships to form, but some LLCs are even helping residents decide the direction of their future careers.
Residents of the Business for the Common Good LLC take Business 200, a zero-credit course in which students team up with companies in the Twin Cities to do service work. Normally a class taken by juniors and seniors, the first-year LLC students are getting a jumpstart on networking, RAs Jared Cutts and Michelle Wise said.
“First semester is going to be just getting everyone accustomed to one another, sharing experiences, sharing ideas,” Cutts said. “Second semester will be more of that career outlook.”
The students will prepare for a career in business with activities like LinkedIn workshops, etiquette dinners and resume writing lessons, according to Wise.
Like the business community, the engineering LLC provides first-year students the support they need to continue to pursue engineering as a major, Brodersen said.
With LLC faculty advisers, tutors and Brodersen herself all there to help the first-year students with the difficult engineering classes, Brodersen said she has stressed to her residents, “Don’t quit because it’s hard. Quit because you don’t like it.”
Because the RAs of the LLC often share the same majors as the residents, many have become mentors figures to their first-year students, both Brodersen and Wise reported.
“Honestly, it’s been the most rewarding thing,” Wise said. “The best compliment I’ve probably gotten from them is ‘the older sister I’ve never had’ or ‘strong female role model,’ and that literally brings tears to my eyes. They’re just the best.”
Sophie Carson can be reached at cars0017@stthomas.edu.