All USF Living-Learning Communities

University Life and the College of Arts and Sciences offer several living-learning opportunities for students. Each year, these unique programs provide students with the opportunity to enhance their leadership and communication skills. Below is a summary for each community.

Martín-Baró Scholars

The Martín-Baró Scholars Community is a two-semester long, community-based living-learning program at the University of San Francisco. The program integrates core requirements and elective units into a single, comprehensive curriculum that examines issues of citizenship, social justice, and diversity. Utilizing the City of San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area, students develop their abilities in observation, discussion, analysis, and writing through the multidimensional lens of the social sciences. Students will be proactive in improving the societal problems they examine throughout the year. While the Community satisfies some core requirements for freshman students, the educational goals reach far beyond attaining the minimum standards; the Martín-Baró Scholars Community is designed to facilitate the creation of a learning community which learns not only from within, but also extends that learning into the larger world.

Selected students live in a designated area of the residence hall and attend class together. They meet and learn from people at USF and in the San Francisco community through active participation in field trips, service-learning experiences, volunteering, and a variety of learning opportunities both in and out of class. Supported by their peers, by student mentors, and by the Martín Baró staff and faculty, students have the benefit of developing a community early in their college career.

Students enrolled in the Martín-Baró Scholars program earn 8 units each semester during their first year at USF. Additionally, the Martín-Baró Scholars Community is designated as a McCarthy Center course. All credits earned count towards graduation and students are formally recognized at the completion of both semesters.

The Garden Project

Based in one of the most environmentally aware and exciting cities in the country, this innovative first year community is open to incoming freshmen regardless of major. Participants will take two courses designed specially for and dedicated to the Garden Project.

Students will be living and studying with a small group with diverse yet complementary interests, with special attention from faculty and staff and will participate in various experiential exercises. .

Students who successfully complete the year in the Garden Project living-learning community will fulfill core requirements for Visual and Performing Arts (Core Area F)*, and Service-Learning (SL) designation as well as eight units of elective credit. In addition to the in-class curriculum, students participate in weekly community development meetings, regional field trips, and other specially designed opportunities.

*Pending approval

To be eligible, you must be an incoming freshman with a broad interest in environmental issues and a willingness to engage in community development centered around the garden effort. ERC is limited so early action on your part is important.

Esther Madríz Diversity Scholars

The primary mission of the Esther Madríz Diversity Scholars(EMDS) is to create a year -long living and learning community that explores topics of multiculturalism, the impact of diversity in our culture, and individual identity development through a classroom component and a residential seminar series. EMDS is based on the idea that none of us experience the world completely without understanding the differences that exist in us and in our society. Rather than simply identify differences, however, EMDS is committed to developing a strong sense of our own identity and teaching the skills necessary to begin a greater conversation about culture, self, and the ability to integrate who we are into where we live.

Erasmus

Erasmus seeks to enhance students' academic learning, personal development, and community through a process in which all community members explore and contribute to the greater truth of learning. Through a classroom component focusing on globalization and social justice, a series of in-hall programs and a possible abroad experience, Erasmus hopes to enhance students’ commitment to values like community development, , social justice, service for and with others, and individual development.