All University College students and staff will live and work in Anderson Hall next year.
UC is a program that allows freshman to live and study with other students based on a common seminar course, according to the UC website.
UC will move student housing from Letts, Clark and Roper Halls into the fourth, fifth and sixth floors of Anderson Hall, said Ryan Anderson, the assistant director for learning communities and assessment for Housing and Dining.
UC students expressed a desire to live closer to other UC students and get to know students from other UC seminars, UC Assistant Director Jamie Wyatt said.
“The feedback that we get from UC students is that they really like meeting and getting to know other UC students, so we anticipate that the new housing arrangement will facilitate that,” she said.
There are currently 16 UC seminar courses, bringing the total number of seminar courses to 18. The UC will add three courses next year: Religion and Globalization, Anthropology of Life in the United States, and Cross-Cultural Communication, said Anderson and Wyatt.
Religion and Globalization will replace the UC section of Forms of the Sacred, Wyatt said in an email.
UC’s central office, which is currently in the Provost’s Office in Leonard Hall, will also move into Anderson this March, Wyatt said.
The new UC office will take over what was previously the South Complex Office, which housed the offices of South Side resident directors.
Two of the RDs moved into the remodeled former ID Card Office and Ryan Anderson’s former office in Anderson. One RD will remain in the South Complex Office to work directly with the UC program, Anderson said.
“I feel that moving the University College office into the same building in which the students live will prove beneficial, both from a student service perspective and also from a professional collaboration perspective,” Anderson said in an email.
UC staffers are modeling the approach based on the success of the Honors Program’s consolidation into Hughes Hall, saying that it has led to “more relationship-building and collaboration,” Anderson said.
However, Anderson notes that the decision to consolidate UC was not based on the Honors model.
“I think rather it would be more accurate to say that it has helped me, as someone who will be working with the UC office, have a frame of reference for how we have been successful in a similar situation in the past,” Anderson said.
pburnett@theeagleonline.com
