Living & Learning

A living space can and should be a place of comfort and community during a transitional part of life as significant as college. At Baylor, intentional networks within residence halls provide a foundation to bolster student success, both in the classroom and their living community and beyond.  

Baylor has developed programming across campus living spaces to support the academic communities represented by all classifications of students. These curated programs not only highlight the rigorous academics students pursue but also support their extracurricular endeavors, making sure to nurture the whole student.

Whether a student wants to collaborate in a creative space, feel challenged in nature, learn to propel their business to the next level or find a mentor to lean on as they pursue their passions, Baylor Living and Learning Communities support a multitude of unique academic experiences. 

Creativity as an Outlet

Located in North Village, Heritage House is home to the Fine Arts Living and Learning Community (LLC), a community for students of any major who have a passion and appreciation for the arts in all forms.

“My favorite thing about this program is seeing students access an art form they’ve never encountered before, like theatre or an opera,” said Kyle Howerton, B.A. ’15, Fine Arts LLC program director. “This program eliminates barriers for students to access art that they may have never been able to experience otherwise.”

“Our students thrive on the air of creativity in the living space.”
Kyle Howerton

Engaging with new and interesting art forms is enlightening for students. Within the Fine Arts LLC, these are the moments the program cultivates in order to create shared experiences that build relationships that last long after students graduate.

“We have community dinners once a month and we always do a big Oscars-themed dinner,” said Anna Jane Vancor, graduate program coordinator in the Fine Arts LLC. “We take lots of day trips to Austin and Dallas, at no cost to the students, to see shows and visit museums.”

Other planned activities include drop-in crafting sessions in the lobby, mini painting classes, open-mic nights and movie marathons. Even when nothing is planned, students in the Fine Arts LLC find a way to come together.

“There is usually at least one person at the piano in our lobby,” said Howerton. “Our students thrive on the air of creativity in the living space and they’re always trying something new or collaborating with their peers.”

Whether a student is an arts major or not, the community allows students to balance the rigor of coursework with creative applications. It also encourages interdisciplinary collaboration. In the halls of Heritage House, one may find a music major working on a score for a film major’s short film or a pre-med student asking an artist for drawing techniques to make cell models. Each student is encouraged to pursue their hobbies and interests alongside their academics from day one.

“This past Move-In Day, we had our welcome dinner, and we made friendship bracelets,” Vancor said. “It’s something seemingly simple, but it gives the excited, nervous, maybe anxious new students a way to decompress and begin putting names to faces they’ll see all year. It’s our way of saying ‘We’re glad you’re here.’”

Living an Adventure

On the fourth floor of Penland Hall, 52 students comprise the Outdoor Adventure LLC. Here, students are encouraged to explore four different relationships: their relationship to themselves, to each other, to God and to creation.

“We have representation from all majors, international students, out-of-state students from other beautiful landscapes,” said David Copeland, B.B.A. ’00, program director for Outdoor Adventure LLC. “We’re a small but very diverse community.”

One component of the LLC is the required class called Introduction to Adventure Sports. The community is broken into teams that rotate through three different sports: backpacking, rock climbing and mountain biking. The course culminates in a variety of trips during Fall Break, ending before finals in other courses so students can focus on their studies.

“There’s this recognition of outdoor adventure and its role in developing emotional intelligence,” Copeland said. “We create shared experiences that allow these deeper relationships and connections to be formed.”

Several students completed a long backpacking trip, 30 miles in about three days with elevation, led by Ellie Bocksch, B.S.Ed. ’24, the graduate assistant for Outdoor Adventure LLC.

“By day three, the bonds those students made with each other were very strong,” Bocksch said. “They were cheering each other on and championing each other.”

“We create shared experiences that allow these deeper relationships and connections to be formed.”
David Copeland

The Outdoor Adventure LLC offers a special Baylor Line Camp during the summer for its incoming residents, as well as many weekend trips students are encouraged to take during the year. These transformational experiences offer a hands-on approach to exploring the four relationships — to themselves, each other, God and creation — within a community that brings the outdoors into their academic experiences.

“We tell our students all the time, ‘You can do hard things,’” Copeland said. “Those are physical ways we’re engaging resilience and grit that they can then turn around and translate to their studies and their lives.”

Entrepreneurship on the Rise

“The growth of Hankamer School of Business has drawn a lot of incoming students,” said Lauren Ross, M.S. ’16, program director for the Business and Innovation (B&I) LLC. “About a quarter of each year’s incoming class are business students.”

Located in Brooks Flats, the Business and Innovation LLC is the second-most popular LLC on campus selected by incoming students. A major perk of living in the community is the opportunity to take Entrepreneurship: Living and Learning, a class only offered to residents of the LLC, and one that counts toward a minor in entrepreneurship.

“The entrepreneurship major has grown,” Ross said. “The entrepreneurship minor, which is only available to those outside of the business school, has shown a rise in interest as well.”

The B&I LLC is a haven for students who are interested in business but are unsure of where they fit; students don’t have to be a pre-business major to live in community.  Many clubs and majors from the Business School come to Brooks Flats and talk to the students about their interests to try to make connections.

“I’m always impressed by how ambitious the students are.”
Lauren Ross

Lee Grumbles, Ph.D., the B&I LLC faculty-in-residence, holds an incubator space every week for the students in the community. Many residents take advantage of this time to discuss everything from beginning business ideas to the details of being an entrepreneur.

“Dr. Grumbles does a really good job of meeting you where you are,” said Natalie Weissinger, a resident of the B&I LLC. “My roommate already had a business developed, and I was just starting to brainstorm ideas. The faculty-in-residence and other students helped answer questions we had and encouraged us to think from different perspectives.”

Much of the business and entrepreneur world can be competitive, with many successful people less than inclined to share industry secrets. At Baylor, making connections, networking and taking advantage of the resources offered is much easier.

“Grumbles invites a lot of speakers that come to his upper-level entrepreneurship classes to speak or even have lunch with our students so they can share expertise and experiences with them,” Ross said. “We focus on what the students are interested in, what they get excited about and how we can bridge that connection.”

The B&I LLC also practices what they teach; when the community has events, local small businesses in Waco are encouraged to share their story with the community of students.

“I’m always impressed by how ambitious the students are and how much they care about what they’re doing,” Ross said. “There’s so much beautiful diversity within our community and I’m curious to see what these students go on to achieve.” 
 

Mentorship in STEM

In 2013, Baylor opened East Village, a new residential complex which consists of two living communities (Earle Hall and Teal Hall), a dining hall, a chapel and offices. As a residential college, Teal was built with faculty and student connections in mind.

“When the University was building Teal, they knew it was going to house engineering and computer science students,” said Jeremy Bugh, program director of Teal Residential College. “Teal also houses pre-nursing students, which provides them a place to strengthen community as they spend their first two years together on the Waco campus before moving to the Louise Herrington School of Nursing to complete their last two years in Dallas.”

Teal is one of three living options on campus that requires a two-year commitment, which strengthens the bond between the engineering and computer science majors who call this hall home.

“You come into Baylor as pre-engineering, and in the first year, you take two introduction to engineering courses. Then, at the start of your second year you can declare what kind of engineering you want to pursue,” said Jackie Guerra, sophomore mechanical engineering student and Teal Residence Hall Council co-president. “We help first-year students with their struggles in those first classes because we’ve been there.”

Each part of the residential college has been well planned to accommodate the spaces engineering and computer science students might need or want. In lieu of plush couches in the lobby, the common area has whiteboards and big tables that invite collaboration around problems and offer opportunities for peer teaching. Also located on the first floor is the workshop.

“During that first year, the engineering and computer science students go through the safety courses for different kinds of machinery that we have in the workshop,” Bugh said. “They then have full access and are encouraged to use this space to help with projects for class or even creative passion projects.”

The encouragement to tinker and to figure things out in a practical and controlled environment provides invaluable experience that students can market toward internships and jobs. Teal Residential College works with the Baylor Research and Innovation Collaborative (BRIC) to highlight those opportunities for students.

“What Baylor has created here is a hub of like-minded peers that hold each other accountable through rigorous studies, but it also provides a safe space where students can bounce ideas off one another,” said Bugh. “The mentorship these students experience from each other creates the strongest bonds that follow them throughout their time at Baylor.”

“The mentorship these students experience from each other creates the strongest bonds that follow them throughout their time at Baylor.”
Jeremy Bugh

Beyond Living — It’s Thriving

“Students transcend learning from their classroom experience,” said Sharra Hynes, Ph.D., senior associate vice president and dean of students. “Baylor’s Campus Living and Learning communities are centered so clearly in our institutional mission to create a caring Christian community.”

The marriage of academics and complementary residential programming is frequently studied and continuously improved in an effort to make this a differentiator for Baylor.

“We are trying to ensure the programming we offer is robust,” said Tiffany Lowe, senior director for Campus Living and Learning. “There’s varied interest from each incoming class of students, and our team is constantly evaluating student needs to provide the best experiences.”

The symbiotic relationship between a student’s academics and residential life is the foundation of a lifelong Baylor experience. Students learn to succeed on their own within the safety of a community that cares for them. They make friends that will walk alongside them throughout their lives. They build the skills that help them grow as leaders and servants.  

“We truly get the privilege to witness transformational work with students,” Hynes said. “We get to purposefully design programming for a particular return — to get students to understand more who God intended them to be.”