Stonehill College
AC-5: Immersive Experience

Stonehill College enrolls Second-Year students in a Learning Community (LC) of their choice. Every year, Stonehill offers LCs that focus on the environment and food politics. These LCs explore the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of these topics. Stonehill’s LCs exemplify our commitment to creating a flexible student-centered climate that promotes academic challenge, cooperative learning and authentic community. Our LCs feature linked or collaboratively taught classes from different disciplines or perspectives that are designed to foster students’ ability to integrate learning across courses, over time and between campus and community life. Students in LCs address real-world problems that are unscripted and broad, requiring multiple modes of inquiry and perspective. An example of an LC that provides a sustainability-focused immersive experience is: The Story of Stonehill's Water. This LC examines Stonehill College uses over 27 million gallons of water per year. This learning community will explore where that water comes from and where it goes after being “used” by the college. More broadly, this course will examine the health of the Taunton River watershed. At the completion of this class, students will be prepared to make recommendations about how to reduce Stonehill's water usage.