Faces of Michigan

Michigan Community Scholars Program (MCSP): Building an intentionally diverse living and learning community of scholars

The Michigan Community Scholars program (MCSP) is an initiative that reflects the promise of diversity. It is a residential learning community, more commonly known as a living-learning program, that aims to encourage students, faculty, community partners, and staff to think critically about issues of community; to model a just, diverse, and democratic community; and to make a difference through their lives as active participants and leaders involved in the local, national and global communities.

MCSP enrolls about 100-125 new students each year, about 50 percent of whom are people of color or international students and of whom 50% are white students. In addition, about 30-40 sophomore and upper-level students return to MCSP as student leaders. Students come from a range of socioeconomic, religious, and cultural backgrounds mirroring the diversity in our nation and the larger global society. This composition allows students from homogenous communities to experience the program as a crucial learning forum. The common thread among the students is a willingness to engage one another, build community, provide service, and become active participants and leaders in a diverse democracy.

MCSP has an exemplary and noteworthy record of student retention. For the past three years, 100% of first-year students at MCSP have returned to UM as sophomores. This success is due in large measure to the program’s ideals of engaged learning and engagement in the community, along with a deep commitment and caring among the administration, faculty and student community for the success and well-being of every individual in the program.

One of the program’s key strategies for promoting engaged learning and easing the transition from high school to college is encouraging student-faculty interaction. Every year, 10 to 15 racially and ethnically diverse faculty members from a variety of disciplines teach and work with MCSP. The program appeals to faculty members who have an interest in community and social change from their own disciplinary perspectives, and who seek the interdisciplinary exchanges possible at MCSP. MCSP courses and office hours are held in the residence hall in order to facilitate student-faculty communication. Faculty offer co-curricular programs in addition to their MCSP courses, and they also meet with students over meals in the residence hall cafeteria. Program academic requirements include departmental-based first-year seminars, a cutting-edge community service-learning course that incorporates intergroup dialogue (Soc 389), and a one-credit MSCP seminar (UC 102).

Started in 1999 and funded by both the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and University Housing, MCSP is built on the concept of boundary-crossing. It crosses the boundaries of academic affairs and student affairs, different academic disciplines, faculty and student divisions, the gap between diversity and other undergraduate initiatives, and the university and the community. In each aspect, it works to bring together the whole for the good of each learner.

MCSP helps students transition from high school to college and prepares students for leadership roles on campus and in their future careers. The program combines residential living and intimate faculty interaction with an intensive learning environment that encourages purposeful civic engagement and leadership potential. Through small courses, service projects, leadership opportunities, social programs, study groups and tutors, students strive to model an ideal community in terms of friendship, responsibility, diversity, celebration, collaboration and caring. Students and faculty members meet for classes and office hours, and eat and participate in student-organized events in Couzens Hall where MCSP students live.

The program’s holistic approach to scholarship means that students think about diversity, community and service in their classes, work on community service projects in diverse communities, and model a multicultural community while living together in the MCSP residence hall. And students work to sustain those experiences outside the program by engaging in organizations focused on social justice and diversity, and by continuing their commitment to community in majors and careers in fields including the liberal arts, business, engineering, education, law, social work and health care. MCSP offers students the opportunity to experience a diverse democracy—an enriching social structure that supports civic participation, intergroup dialogue, and an amalgam of differences as well as commonalities among individuals and identity groups.

Diversity means more than just having a representation of students from different backgrounds: the promise of diversity is evidenced when individuals from diverse backgrounds are engaged with each other for deeper learning and for the betterment of the entire community. Institutions and programs that embrace diversity become enriched when its members actively interact as a community and regularly engage in conversations with each other. Diversity-focused education is distinct from other student learning initiatives: it is fully integrated and advances intellectual and social growth. It encompasses people who care about each other, support each other’s beliefs and allow each other to explore different perspectives. MCSP, as a residential learning community, is a model of the success of such an approach and a testament to the hopes for a well-educated, just, and diverse democratic society.

Parts of this text have been adapted from V. Thandi Sule. 2006. “The Michigan Community Scholars Program. The Promise of Diversity.” Ann Arbor: University [of Michigan] Diversity Council. October.

(Shown in photo are four members of the 2007-2008 MCSP community (l- r): Kah Wee Liew, Hamidah Khairiyyah Abdul Rahman, Jelani S. Bayi, Jessica Feldman.)