Sophomore Honors students will have the option to live in an Honors Living Learning Community for the first time next semester in Barret Hall.
Dr. Trey Shirley, associate dean of the Honors College, said positive student feedback about the community created in Wessel Hall inspired the Honors College to extend the Living Learning Community from freshman year into sophomore year as well.
“One of the things we noticed at the end of the year was that a lot of students were really grieving,” Shirley said. “They were sad. They said they were going to miss the community that we built here.”
Shirley compared Honors and non-honors students’ questionnaire answers. He said Honors students responded that living in the residence hall contributed to their sense of community a significant amount more than non-honors students responded.
When asked the question, “Did living in your hall strengthen your performance as a student?,” there was a 10% increase in ‘strongly agree’ from Honors students and a 10% decrease in the ‘strongly disagree’ category.
“The Honors Hall environment is having a strong impact both on social connection and on academic performance,” Shirley said.
Unlike Barret Hall, Wessel Hall was designed to be an Honors dorm. Wessel houses an additional 100 students, has a classroom built into it, and has the Community Director, Janine Morgan, living in a separate, but connected space.
Shannon Kaczmarek, dean of living community and wellness, was involved in the designing process of Wessel five years ago. Kaczmarek said even though Barret Hall was not originally designed to be an Honors Hall, that the layout works well for it.
Each Barret Hall pod has eight residents who share a living room space.
“With the pod-style living arrangement of Barret, we have the opportunity to really hone into some more specialized learning within those groups of students,” Kaczmarek said, “It’s our building that has the most adaptability, and it has kind of a more small community style of living.”
The deadline for students to choose where they are living next year is Saturday. Kaczmarek said she estimates that 100 to 120 Honors students will choose to room at Barret Hall next year. Barret can sleep 165 people in total.
The Honors College has not hired anyone to be the community director of Barret Hall yet. Whoever is hired will be in charge of organizing events and bringing together students. Shirley anticipates that the future community director will step into their role by June 1.
“We have some ideas right now, but we also don’t want to tie the hands of the new Living Learning Community director,” Shirley said. “We want them to have the freedom to be able to envision that according to the needs they see and hear from the students they will work closely with.”
