Your experience at the University of Southern Maine is about preparing you academically for your future, but it’s also about the people you meet here and the experiences you have with them inside and outside the classroom. At USM, we assign all first-year residential students to a Living Learning Community (LLC), rather than having students select a specific residence hall. Your LLC assignment is based on the FYE 101: Husky Participate and Connect Course (PACC) course (or equivalent) that you choose with your Academic Advisor during your initial Advising and Course Selection (ACS) meeting. These 1-credit experiential learning courses are a requirement for all first-year residential students and are highly encouraged for our first-semester commuter students looking to fully experience all that our university has to offer. If you are looking to live with a specific roommate, please make sure that you enroll in the same course to be housed together! For information about the FYE 101: Husky PACC and equivalent course offerings, please click here!
What is a Living Learning Community?
Living Learning Communities (LLCs) are housing communities made up of smaller cohorts of students who all have at least 1 common academic course together. Students who participate in LLCs report a smoother transition to college and living on campus, and higher satisfaction with their residential experience. As such, all of our first-year students here at the University are housed in one of our LLCs.
The majority of our LLCs are general First Year Experience sections, made up of a variety of students from different majors and interests who share the same FYE 101:Husky PACC. Some programs and departments have their own special interest opportunities that have a connected LLC as well, such as the Honors Program, the Russell Scholars Program, Promise Scholars, and TRIO. Please note that TRIO, Promise Scholars, the Honors Program, and the Russell Scholars Program are all learning communities or programs that continue past your first year at USM.
We also offer both a first-year and an upper-class Rainbow floor for students who wish to live together on a community floor seeking to celebrate and support the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, queer, questioning, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA+) community at USM. Students wishing to live on the first-year Rainbow floor should select a Rainbow-themed FYE 101: Husky PACC during their ACS meeting.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to email us at usm.reslife@maine.edu