Residential Clusters

• Establish a pilot “cluster” housing project, focused around a community service experience (whether a cause, an organization, a neighborhood, shelter, food drive, health drive, etc.).
• Affiliate this pilot project’s focus (encourage the same in current specialty on-campus residences) with specific courses at the University, spanning all course levels to support students’ fulfillments of different course requirements in their declared majors.
• Establish a Smartsearch site for the University’s volunteer and community-oriented opportunities to enhance advisors’ capacity to link the extracurricular and the experiential to existing BU courses.
• Advance the 2-credit course impact through collaborative assignments associated with the “cluster house,” such as capstone projects that would document student skills (academic and social), maturity, and knowledge at different stages of their BU experience.
• Emphasize the “cluster house” as a learning site for research methodologies and skills through regular contact with different faculty members via presentations, mentoring, and supervision for student projects.
• Promote UROP and GUTS as the mentoring and scholarly resources they are and urge students to explore the potential research and training possibilities in this kind of employment.
• Stress communal spirit and generosity in service work within the actual residency of the “cluster house” (housekeeping, desk duty, and so on) as well as volunteerism outside the residence’s walls.

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