Living & Learning Communities

The best way to secure prime residence hall space with your best friends is to earn it through service to others in a Living and Learning Community. That’s exactly what Brittany VanArkel and seven friends decided when they formed a Colleges Against Cancer (CAC) chapter in 2006.

Their largest project was serving as recruitment chairpersons for Relay For Life, an annual fund-raising event for the American Cancer Society organized by Cornell’s Civic Engagement Program. CAC recruited 41 teams and performed other organizing roles for the overnight event that raised over $52,000.

With support from the ACS and Cornell staff, VanArkel says CAC members have learned a great deal about running their own organization.

"It’s prepared us for the real world when we will be the ones in charge,” she says.

CAC members lived together on the Living and Learning Community floor of Merner Hall in 2006-07. The members of CAC bonded on Connect Floor, a first-year floor focused on service and leadership, the previous year.

VanArkel says students came to Connect Floor with a diversity of backgrounds, interests, and personalities. But they quickly connected and developed an open-door policy, thanks in part to a facilitated retreat at Lake Macbride where they got to know and trust one another.

"It was a great environment for me to come into as a freshman because it made me feel like I had strong bonds at Cornell almost instantly,” she says.