STUDENT HOUSING | As Loyola Marymount University continues to grow, so does its student population, including opportunities for on-campus residential spaces to extend students learning opportunities into their lives outside of the classroom. LMU Student Housing’s vision is to build communities that transform and inspire students to change our world.
Many students share the impact of their residential experiences with housing staff regularly. For example, one student commented on how they had become more involved on campus and that their academics were flourishing now, with the support of the community and resources. Another student felt like living on campus increased the interactions they were having with their support system, including their resident adviser, and living with them has helped them to cultivate strong relationships.
Whether it’s in the student’s first year or the last year, living on campus offers many benefits that can be helpful to a student. Studies show when students reside on-campus, they receive many benefits that directly correlate to their academic and social success when compared to students living off campus. Generally, they are more satisfied with their overall college experience and connect their experiences living in a residence hall to having greater personal growth and development.
Research indicates that students who live on campus have:
- Academics – Greater access to academic resources, which in-turn help on-campus residential students to have higher GPAs than those who move off campus;
- Connections with faculty – More connections and build relationships with their faculty and advisers;
- Retention and persistence – These have increased with a deeper sense of institutional commitment and an increased opportunity for retention;
- Student well-being – The desire to reapply to live on campus due to social interactions, leadership opportunities and convenience factors. Students also report feeling the positive effects of living on campus include a higher sense of belonging, engagement, and openness to diversity.
One of the opportunities for students to connect their learning directly to their living on-campus residential experience is through LMU’s Living/Learning Communities. LLCs are for students who share a common interest or academic pursuit, to live and study in an intentional educational community. These communities create a more academically and relationally supportive environment for students living on campus and enhance the residential and educational experience of students.
Returning students have the opportunity to participate in various LLC options next year, including four new options inside Palm South, opening in Fall 2020.
- Arrupe – Highlighting the Ignatian roots of the LMU Mission statement, the Arrupe LLC seeks to help students understand and intentionally live out this mission that grounds their education at LMU in creative, practical ways.
- Entrepreneurship: Innovating for Resilient Communities: This community allows CBA students to live together and study green infrastructure, water security, food security, biodiversity, human mobility, healthcare, climate uncertainty, population change, social inequity, resource acquisition/allocation and economic stability.
- Gender and Intersectional Identities: The Gender and Intersectional Identities LLC will serve all students with interest in developing their understanding of the complex ways gender and gender identity shapes the world around them and their experience of community.
- Vanier: The Mission of the Vanier community is to cultivate the next generation of leaders to be people with and for others. This Service Living community is using a multi-year cohort model students will engage in hands-on service in the Los Angeles community and immersive learning modules that provide a framework for creating social change.
For more information on opportunities to connect students to on-campus residential opportunities or Living/Learning Communities, contact Student Housing.
