Multicultural learning community to open on campus

If life is one great learning experience, surely there is no better laboratory than the street where you live.

Or the residence hall: A year from now, the UW–Madison College of Letters and Science and School of Education will join University Housing in opening a multicultural learning community in Witte Residence Hall.

As UW–Madison’s newest learning community, the MLC joins the Chadbourne Residential College, Bradley Learning Community for first-year students, Global Village in Merit Hall, and the Women in Science and Engineering program in Elizabeth Waters.

Learning communities, a growing phenomenon at colleges and universities around the world, incorporate educational activities into the very fabric of daily life. The usual tools for this endeavor might be field trips, lectures, projects, discussions, social activities, guests and more.

The Witte MLC also will provide opportunities for students to explore cultural heritage and ethnic diversity through service projects related to social issues and through the celebration of multicultural holidays, music, food and more, says Larry Davis, assistant resident life director-residential education.

The MLC will offer students a solid academic base. MLC faculty director Carl Grant, curriculum and instruction, says he sees the academic component of the community as being especially important to its overall effectiveness.

“An important goal of the MLC is to help students connect and see in whatever discipline they are studying the ways in which ethnicity, race, gender, class and the effects of power have an influence,” Grant says. Indeed, MLC students will be expected to attend a faculty-led seminar each semester.

The MLC is a student-initiated project, opening in direct response to student interest, Davis says.

“A group of students came to us last year and said it would be easier make the transition to the university if they could live in a more diverse community within the residence halls,” he says.

At the moment, housing staff are identifying faculty and staff interested in helping the MLC get a handle on multicultural issues and launching the learning community. Plans set aside 50-100 spaces for MLC students in the 1,100-resident hall. Davis says the MLC is open to any student seeking a diverse community and interested in participating in a range of activities.

Space is available for fall 2002. For information, contact Kathy Sisneros, (608) 262-9049, or Larry Davis, (608) 262-0914.