RLCs claim mixed sucess in ‘09

Each year, a group of students elects to take up housing in a Residential Learning Community (RLC) and live along side those who share the same interest in academics or service.

This year two brand new communities, the Emerging Leaders RLC and the Community Service RLC, have been established at St. Joe’s and the Romero RLC, currently in its second year, has experienced overwhelming participation from the student body. The Romero RLC is located in the Morris Quad Townhouses and focuses on social justice, activism and community service.

“Romero just started last year, and we have had unprecedented success with that,” said Jessica Moran-Buckridge, assistant director of Residential Education. “We have actually had to start a wait list with that this year.”

According to Moran-Buckridge, not all student communities develop with such success. While the Office of Residence Life is open to all student proposals for beginning new communities, students must garner enough peer interest before a spot can be designated for the community to operate from. 

“There are some that are struggling a little bit more but we’ve had some that have been really successful as well,” said Moran-Buckridge. “This year we’ve been approached by one particular student who wanted to start a multicultural living RLC, and we’ve worked with him to kind of develop that and to market that a little bit. We’ve had minimal interest, maybe from about four students, and we would love to support that going forward, but with four students it really wouldn’t be a dynamic or sustainable program, so we are not able to offer that next year.”

Chris Heasley, associate director of Residence Life, said that the communities that have garnered success include students with prior connections from work or class experience.

“They all know each other and they do service and social justice activism together, so living together just seems like an easy next step for them,” Heasley said.

Resident assistants (RAs) are specially designated to work within a community and work with their area coordinators to set up hall programs that assist with the particular group’s career choice or else cater to the specific interests of the community.

David Trotto, ’11, an RA of the Business Community located on the second floor of McShain Hall, agreed that there are difficulties within RLCs for gathering enough student participation for hall programs.

“It’s sometimes hard to get participation,” Trotto said. “I would encourage people that apply to be in one of these communities [to] really participate. Because if they don’t, they are not going to take advantage of these benefits that are being provided for them, so it’s kind of useless to just seclude yourself because you’re not going to gain anything from it.”

Trotto runs business programs for 49 first year students. According to Trotto, the programs focus on economics, environmental friendliness, and marketing techniques, among other things.

“For the residents, it allows them to connect off campus learning with on campus learning,” Trotto said. “Basically they take their experiences that they learn in the classrooms and apply them to the real world and it also provides a group to study together, to work together and to build relationships all because they all have this one common major.”

Trotto also said that in spite of the commonalities shared between the members of the community, the group remains as diverse as any other dormitory on campus.

“Even though we are all business majors, we still live in a dorm and it’s not like we’re closed off from the rest of the campus,” Trotto said. “We live in a hall in McShain with seven other halls, there is still a lot of interaction that goes on between different residents. It’s still a diverse group of people so I wouldn’t say that it takes away from the college experience.”

In Rashford Hall, Samantha Attenborough, ’11, runs programs for upperclassmen business majors. Like many of the student communities at St. Joe’s, Attenborough’s group works with faculty members who act as mentors in the learning experience. Attenborough said that Bill Bordak, assistant director of the Office of Community Standards, worked with the group on how to observe proper Facebook etiquette and Mathew Brink, director of Career Development and Learning, discussed financial planning for college with residents.

Attenborough, like Moran-Buckridge, and Trotto also discussed the participation levels of her hall programs.    

“Upperclassmen are always a little bit more difficult to get involved in things; however, I’ve had a very enjoyable time with this particular group of residents,” Attenborough said. “The freshmen living learning floors typically have higher rates of participation for a variety of reasons. The more general stuff which is easier to program for, RAs will have more success with. But with upperclassmen, it’s harder to get the whole group involved because they’ve already picked their specific segments that they want to go into.”

Attenborough also said that the programs that are designed for leisure or recreation generally see higher rates of participation.

Moran-Buckridge said that the three brand new programs from 2008-2009 have left the office in need of a “stabilizing year.” Next year, Residence Life will work on solidifying the current communities before endeavoring to establish new ones, but that the future still holds possibilities for interested students, according to Moran-Buckridge.

“It’s kind of an experiment for us too,” she said. “Every year we’re trying to develop those programs and recruit more students to them as well as develop the programming that happens there, develop relationships with faculty members as well. We’re excited about developing new programs and I think our office is pretty consistent with working with students to try to offer them things that they’re interested in participating in. I’m excited about the future, we’ll see if students are as well.”

Although upperclassmen are still required to participate in the lottery, all students interested in applying to a learning community can register online on the Web site of the Office of Residence Life before the housing process begins. Visit http://www.sju.edu/ studentlife/studentresources/housing/oncampus/index.html for more details.