Student Watch: Winter 2012

Photo: Bryce Richter

Finding friends during the first year of college takes time, but it got much easier for the students in the UW’s newest residential learning community — Creative Arts and Design in Sellery Hall.

The timing for the community couldn’t have been better: soon after the idea was hatched, developing a new space for the group was folded into evolving plans for Sellery Hall, says Jim Franzone of University Housing. The community’s sixty-four students now have access to new art studios, a black-box theater, and renovated music practice rooms.

As with the campus’s other learning communities, students, faculty, and staff have a specific focus, and students are enrolled in a class together — in this case, tackling social justice issues and their relationship to the arts. “The biggest value to studying the arts is that [students] can discover themselves and interpret the world around them,” says Justin Barney x’13, the community’s house fellow.

This interdisciplinary approach to interacting with the arts will encourage students to truly explore their creativity. A few residents have already formed a band; others are working on art to display on Sellery’s walls. “We are so encouraged by the positivity and creativity of these students,” says Franzone. “We want to see this carry through year by year, adding arts as another great talent of UW students.”

Published in the Winter 2012 issue