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Ethics living-learning community in second year

By Arri Eisen. My family and I are spending our second year living on the Clairmont Campus in a "living-learning community" called BASE (Bridging Academics, Service, and Ethics).

BASE is a collaborative project of the Center for Ethics, Campus Life, the Program in Science & Society, and the Emory Scholars. We live with 28 junior and senior undergraduates committed to connecting intellectual in-class work with everyday out-of-class life.

This year we have an outstanding group of truly exceptional young people–one indication of this, for example, is that we have three Emory nominees for the Rhodes Scholarship on our hall alone! We had a beginning-of-the-year retreat at Camp Glisson, where we connected with each other over ropes courses, deep conversations about our goals for the year, and games of Trivial Pursuit.

We decided our theme for the year would be getting to know Emory, our place, our history, our ecology, better. Toward that end, our dinner guests have included John Wegner, our campus environmental officer, discussing the campus plan, and Jim Laney, former president of Emory and ambassador to South Korea, discussing the changes he has seen at Emory and the political situation on the Korean peninsula. We have in-depth follow-up discussions with small groups of students after each guest's visit. We also support small get-togethers of BASE students interacting socially on the hall or at cultural events like the Indian festival of lights Divali.

Like last year, I will be teaching a senior seminar (this time on Biology, Sex, and Gender) at the Clairmont Campus Student Academics and Athletics Center. Many of the BASE students will take the class, which will be only a few feet from where we all live—adding to the residential college-like atmosphere.

We are currently recruiting faculty and students to live on BASE next year to continue this new, two-year-old tradition.

[ Posted by Arri Eisen at December 1, 2004 10:19 AM | More BASE Community articles ]

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