Living/Learning Communities

As freshman roommates and hall mates meet the new and challenging environment of college, they develop some of their most lasting friendships. For students participating in the Living and Learning Experience - a program that combines the residential and academic functions central to a student's first year - the roots of these friendships are intellectual as well as social.

What Teachers Say...

This arrangement gives an intellectual reason to form close bonds, which is rare among freshmen. When you see those bonds being formed that early, you know you have a good basis for a continued presence at the College.

VICTOR N. CABAS
Professor of Rhetoric and English
Program Advisor and former Seminar Instructor

This year Hampden-Sydney is sponsoring three Living and Learning Communities, each corresponding with a freshman course. Students in a specific community take the same class, live on the same hall, and have the same freshman faculty advisor, who is also the instructor for that class. Each hall's resident advisor, an upperclassman, offers informal academic and personal support, communicates with the professor, and, when possible, is enrolled in the class as a model student.

Through this arrangement, classrooms quickly become a place of camaraderie and dorms become a forum for continuing the discussions. Living and learning become inseparable experiences as ideas, intellectual curiosity, and lifetime friendships burgeon simultaneously.

The aim of such a close-knit learning community is to create a holistic learning experience, improve the quality of classroom time, increase retention, and foster a well-adjusted group of freshmen by arming them with the skills and personal connections they need to have a more fulfilling college career. From the very beginning, freshmen learn that Hampden-Sydney is a place in which ideas are not simply a part of the classroom, but rather a part of college life.

Offerings for Fall 2012

Western Culture 101: Beginning to 900 C.E.
Dr. Matthew Bowman, Visiting Professor of Religion

Common topics and events are civilization in the Fertile Crescent, the rise of Athens and democracy, the Roman Empire and its aftermath, Hebrew culture, and the rise of Christianity. Common texts are Homer, Iliad (selections); Sophocles, Oedipus Rex; Plato, Apology; Genesis (selections) and one gospel (selections); Augustine, Confessions (selections).  This course fulfills a requirement in the Core Curriculum.

Religion 101 for the living and learning community will specifically focus on the role of sacrifice and service within the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions.  The course will consider (among other topics) the Sacrifice of Isaac (or Ishmael in the Muslim tradition) by Abraham, scapegoating, the crucifixion of Jesus, the Holocaust, the idea of discipline, martyrdom, asceticism, service, and altruism.  We will also consider the effect of sacrifice in the lives of believers from these traditions.  Students will also be asked to sacrifice/donate some time during the semester toward a local charitable and humanitarian enterprise with the rest of the class and to reflect upon it in the context of the readings.  This course fulfills a requirement in the Core Curriculum.

Freshmen Seminar 185: Murder
Dr. Jennifer Vitale, Elliot Associate Professor of Psychology

Why do people kill? Are murderers distinct from other violent criminals? Does the public respond differently to homicide than to other forms of violent crime? In what ways does "state sanctioned" killing (e.g., war, capital punishment) differ in its causes and effects from other forms of homicide?

This is an entry-level course that is designed to introduce students to the issues surrounding the causes and effects of homicide. In the first part of the course, the psychological processes underlying violence will be explored with a specific focus on those factors that appear to distinguish murderers from other violent criminals. We will  focus on research evidence relevant to these issues from the areas of sociology and clinical, social, developmental, biological, and evolutionary psychology. In the second part of the course, society's perceptions of homicide and murderers will be explored using popular readings, as well as through other media (e.g., television and film).