The Daily Campus

Issue date: 2/26/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Photo Courtesy of Melinda Fusco Isaac Ortega, Global House program director, is pictured above with students in Patagonia.

Internationalizing national students, while helping international students is the goal of a new program called Global House at UConn, which will open this fall, according to Isaac "Morty" Ortega, director of the program and an associate professor of wildlife ecology in the Department of Natural Resources Management and Engineering.

Global House will be the newest living community freshman and international students will have a choice to live in while residing in on-campus housing.

According to the First Year Programs' Web site, living communities offer students an exciting opportunity to explore a common interest while living and studying together. Students in a living community take a one-credit seminar class together, and may have other classes in common. The seminar class offers students a chance to build community, smooth the transition to university life and explore a topic of mutual interest.

About a year ago, the provost created a new Task Force on Developing Global Citizens. From there the idea of creating a global living-learning community was developed, Ortega said.

According to Veronica Makowsky, vice provost for Undergraduate Education and Regional Campus Administration, UConn students have gotten better and more interested and motivated over the past decade.

"They need and deserve more living-learning communities in general in order to promote a total learning environment in which co-curricular activities support academic activities or even inspire new academic pursuits," Makowsky said. "In particular, Global House supports a major goal of the Provost's academic plan, internationalization and supports the third major goal-developing global citizens of the undergraduate education strategic plan."

The idea is to have about 40 national and 40 international students in the community, Ortega said.

With a concentrated diverse area of living, "Students learn a great deal from their peers, and Global House will promote this mutually supportive learning," Makowsky said.

Global House will be located in McMahon Residence Hall. A few classrooms are planned to be included in this living community along with an office, Ortega said.

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