How Living-Learning Communities shape students and build connections at Baylor
Seven Baylor residence halls are more than just residence halls — they’re Living-Learning Communities, or LLCs for short. These LLCs are organized around specific degree programs or interests, such as business, science, even outdoor adventure and wellbeing, building intentional community for BU students with similar goals and callings in life.
Dr. Karenna Malavanti (BS ’10, MA ’12), senior lecturer of psychology and neuroscience, serves as faculty-in-residence at Earle Hall, where she leads the nearly 350 students in Baylor’s Science and Health Living-Learning Community.
She shared a few of the traits that make these communities so meaningful to students on a recent Baylor Connections podcast:
Purposeful Community: “[The LLC is a fantastic place where our students come together in a setting where they’re like-minded, and they have a lot of people here to support them. We create a cohesive model to connect these students, to help them engage with their career aspirations and their major, and we focus on them as a complete person — socially, academically and spiritually. The programs and activities we offer support all of those [facets] in an authentic Christian community.”
Preparing them for their profession: “We offer a few classes in a cohort model that we call B2C. Baylor offers special chapels for students in biology, chemistry and the healing professions, and that’s held right outside our doors for our students. So, students can hear from leaders who have navigated faith in challenging times as they have worked with patients, or serve together in different ways. We offer mission trips available only to students in the Science and Health LLC. I also bring in some of my health professional friends so our students can ask great questions about what it’s really like to be, for example, a doctor in Waco, or navigating medical or PA school, or anything they may want to know from people doing the jobs they hope to do.”
Caring for the whole person: “I think that our students are naturally going to be paying really close attention to their studies, so a lot of our programming is non-academic — it’s more social, relational, and it’s trying to help our students care for their soul, body and mind. We have Bible studies, service opportunities, dinners together, and a great group of student leaders who put together special programming for their fellow students.”
Foundation for long-term relationships: “Our students tend to be in many of the same classes even after the first semester, even after B2C, and they’re in a lot of the same organizations. So, they get to support each other — they know when test week is happening, for example, and they share notes in a very good way just to boost the learning. I think it’s really important that they share these experiences together.”
Life together: “So many of the special moments are informal. It’s the moments where I’m walking through the hall just saying hi with my daughter, or hearing that they get to go home this weekend or how excited they were that their grandma get out of the hospital. Lately, some of our leaders have been interviewing for medical school. Hearing their joyful news of acceptances into medical school or graduate programs, it is truly the in-between the formal moments that make this so enjoyable.”
Sic ’em, Baylor Living-Learning Communities!