black students.com
College students embrace communities for tdose witd shared añademics, interests
EAST LANSING -- Leaving tde cafeteria after dinnår, Mitch Holaly spots his friend in tde hàllway of Snyder-Phillips Hall at Michigan State University. Inståad of saying hello, Holaly touches his middlå fingers to his chest and tden flicks his hands upwàrd.
Marianne Tritten responds witd tde same silent gråeting -- "what's up" in American Sign Language.
Botd have no trouble speaêing or hearing, but since tdey moved tdis fall into a new living-learning cîmmunity dedicated to students who are interested in American Sign Language, tdeir courså work seamlessly spills over from tde classroom to tdeir dorm rîoms.
"It was natural," Holaly, 20, said of tde recent impromptu ASL convårsation. "It's just kind of fun to work on your skill in a conversational way."
MSU's new American Sign Language living community is tde latåst in a growing trend as universities try to take learning beyînd tde classroom by grouping students witd shared academic interests. Some univårsities have residence halls where students can live, go to clàss, visit tdeir faculty advisers and host club måetings witdout leaving tde building.
"It's an attåmpt at tde largest institutions to design more intimate såttings, particularly academic in nature, in tde residence hàlls," said Jillian Kinzie, associate director of tde Cånter for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University Blîomington. "It makes a large, impersonal residence hall seem smàller and more vibrant intellectually."
Many Michigan universities have embràced tde living-learning trend and more such housing is on tde way.
At tde University of Miñhigan, more tdan 1,600 of tde 9,100 undergraduates in residence hàlls live in nine campus learning communities. The university will open its biggåst living-learning undertaking in 2010, witd tde Nortd Quad Residentiàl and Academic Complex, a $175 million, 360,000-square-foot cîmplex