When Caroline Eisenmann ’12 first arrived at her room in the Butterfields, she was surprised to find out that her new hall mates would also be her classmates in her First Year Initiative (FYI) seminar, Personal Identity and Choice.

“I requested first-year housing and ended up in the Butts,” Eisenmann said. “We just got thrown into it. I feel a little bit like a guinea pig, but in a good way.”

In order to bridge the gap between academic, social and residential life, the Office of Student Affairs, along with the Office of Academic Affairs, has established a new Learning and Living Program this year, giving first-year students the opportunity to live among their classmates. The three FYI’s that were chosen for this program are from three different departments—Personal Identity and Choice, Music and Downtown New York, and Haiti: Myths and Realities—and are each being housed in a different Butterfield dormitory.

“We wanted a range of different kinds of classes,” said Paula Lawson, associate provost of Academic Affairs.

According to Elise Springer, a professor of philosophy who teaches the Learning and Living seminar Personal Identity and Choice, the administration was looking for courses that would be engaging for first-year students.

“They contacted people whose courses looked interesting for this kind of project,” she said. “Not overly technical topics, but things that students might find some sort of common ground for wider discussion and social interaction.”

As with many FYI’s, extensive dialogue and discussion are fundamental tools for Springer’s course in philosophy.

“I am excited about the dialogue that will happen between the students,” Springer said. “By having students live together, we set up a situation in which they could really do philosophy more than they could if they were reading text in their rooms separately. They can shape ideas together.”

While Springer has taught this course in the past without students living together, she is not concerned that this new living condition will bring students’ social lives into the classroom in a less high-minded way.

“The course is partly about personal differences; I could imagine some sort of interesting personal issues tying over into issues we will be dealing with,” Springer said. “This course is actually one where people could raise issues about the nature of social disagreement or about choices they make in living with each other.”

Since new freshmen often spend the majority of their time with their hall mates, the potential that the college social scene could enter into the classroom has become a reality for students living and working together. Nevertheless, Springer’s students are not worried.

“We party, they party, everyone else parties,” said James Curtin ’12. “It’s not a big deal.”

Thus far, the positive student feedback bodes well for the program.

“It’s a nice way to create a sense of community, which we can sometimes lack in the Butts because of the set-up of the dorms,” Eisenmann said. “It was an awesome way to get to know people from my floor.”

Since students often get together to discuss philosophy, friendships have developed outside of the classroom. Laughing, Eisenmann explained that her peers from the class watched the movie “Mystery Man” during the time that they had planned to discuss the course.

“The living and learning element really does add,” Eisenmann said. “What better way to take what you’ve learned above and beyond the classroom, than to live with the people you talk with in class?”

While most students do not regret being a part of the Learning and Living Program, many, like Eisenmann and Curtin, were unaware of what they were signing up for until they arrived on campus. Curtin, like others, was interested in philosophy and decided to sign up for the class for that reason.

“It’s a small class and I had heard good things about the professor,” Curtain said. “I knew it was an FYI, but I didn’t know that it was part of the Learning and Living Program. [Nonetheless] it’s been great so far.”

According to Professor of Government Louise Brown, who is dean of the class of 2009, Wesleyan is a great place for programs like this to happen, because it creates a good environment for discussion and encourages students to work collectively outside the classroom.

“The program is a good opportunity for co-curricular work,” Brown said. “The faculty is very excited about it. Students and faculty will get a lot out of it.”

Brown worked closely with Paula Lawson, associate provost of Academic Affairs, to help facilitate this program.

“I hoped students would be interested and would see this as an opportunity to extend learning beyond the classroom,” Lawson said.

As a leader for the common reading discussions, Lawson got the opportunity to discuss the program with the students involved.

“They were excited about it and very enthusiastic,” Lawson said. “I was mildly concerned that students who picked this class over the summer would change their minds about the course when they came to campus. Then it wouldn’t work as well. So in order to make it work, we had to set up housing assignments in the summer and lock in the arrangement.”

ResLife worked closely with the Office of Academic Affairs to place these students with their classmates.

“At Wesleyan, where all freshmen are required to live on campus, being able to blend out of the classroom experience with experiences in the classroom is a great opportunity,” said Fran Koerting, director of Residential Life. “It’s been wonderful working with academics.”

Thus far, the Learning and Living Program appears to be a successful start of a long-term project at the University.

“We hope it will continue, but it is a pilot, and we will be studying this to see what worked and what could be changed,” Lawson said.