Seizing Opportunities uwaterloo.ca

Living-Learning Communities

“Before I came to Waterloo,” says Kelly Wong, a first-year student in mathematics/chartered accountancy, “I imagined that professors would be very different from the teachers at high school: harder to approach.” The prospect of going to a new school where she didn’t know anyone was also daunting. But she quickly found that UW was ready to help her make that adjustment.

Like many UW undergrads, Wong lives in residence. But this is rez with a difference. She is one of 111 accountancy students who make up UW’s first Living-Learning Community, launched in September 2006. The community is divided into clusters of roughly 16 students each in six houses in Village I, an arrangement that gives the accountancy students a group identity, while making it easy for them to mingle with other students in residence. Each cluster has its own peer leader, an upper-year accountancy student, and the whole community gathers several times each term for dinners and other events.

“While a key goal is to support academic success and learning outside the classroom, it isn’t the only goal,” says Melissa McNown, co-ordinator of Living-Learning Programs. The larger objective is to enrich students’ university experience by helping them develop professionally, intellectually, socially, and culturally.

For this first group of students, the immediate goal is also to help them make the sometimes difficult transition from high school to university. As Kelly Wong can attest, meeting professors informally – at a barbecue, for example – can give students the confidence to speak up in the classroom, or ask for academic help when they need it. At other social events, they might meet alumni who can share insights on what it’s like to be a professional accountant.

Peer leaders develop and organize academic sessions to enhance study and writing skills, supported by online modules on UW-ACE. One workshop helps with the e-portfolios required of arts accountancy students.

The program will continue as these students move on to second year, McNown says, with programming and living arrangements adapted to their changing needs. It’s an idea that’s taking hold. A living-learning community for environmental studies students living at St. Paul’s College will launch in fall 2007, and other faculties are making plans as well. In the years to come, other variations on the model could include a public policy think tank for upper-year students and a global arts community of Canadian and international students.

At the end of the first term, Kelly Wong says she believes she’s made the right choice. “There isn’t much about the Living-Learning Community I would want to change, now that the program is more developed,” she says. “Would I recommend it to a student coming in? Definitely!”