Elevate Your Wisconsin Experience
Designed to enhance and connect your experience both inside and outside the classroom, learning communities are the best of both worlds — the resources of a top research university combined with the intimate community feel of a small liberal arts college. By living in these communities, you’ll be surrounded by friends who share your interests, making it easier to relate what you learn in classes to your future career and putting you on the fast track to success.
Why Join a Learning Community?
- Exclusive special events, for-credit seminars, and activities built around your interests
- Co-sponsored by UW-Madison Schools and Colleges
- Open to students of any major — focus on your major or explore subjects to find your path
- Additional staff to help residents succeed:
- Faculty Directors: professors that provide leadership, discussion, and networking outside classes and office hours
- Program Manager: full-time professional staff who oversee communities, plan events, and assist with career advising and academic support
- Learning Community Program Assistants: students who previously lived in a learning community who provide education, recreation, and support to new residents
- Peer Mentors: students who previously lived in a learning community who provide education and support to new residents in specific learning community seminars
- Your level of involvement is completely up to you
Our Communities
BioHouse
Bond with other budding scientists! Nurture your passion for the study of living things, whether it’s plants, animals, health, microbiology, evolution, food genetics, or anything biological.
Bradley
Explore your interests, potential majors, and campus with a supportive community at your back. Get to know professors right away in Bradley’s small and personalized Roundtable Seminars.
Business Connect
Designed for first-year direct admits to the Wisconsin School of Business, this community provides opportunities for mentorship with upperclassmen, engagement, and access to the School of Business.
Chadbourne Residential College
By fostering connections with faculty, students, and the campus community, Chadbourne helps you explore a liberal arts education with a combination of academics and social life in the heart of campus.
GreenHouse
GreenHouse is all about living sustainably. With a greenhouse on-site, teaching kitchen, vegetable farm, workshops, community meals, and special events, you’ll develop life-long skills.
International
Become a world citizen with friends from across the globe. Feast on international cuisine, take a class with a global focus, and immerse yourself in language by joining one of seven language communities.
Multicultural
A safe and welcoming space where you can gain an expanded worldview and build solidarity by engaging in themes of multiculturalism, social justice, inclusion, race, and identity.
Open House
Examine gender and sexuality and gain an insider’s view of the diversity of human experience. All students are invited to develop their understanding & establish mentorships with faculty in this welcoming community.
StartUp
StartUp is all about dreaming big and innovation! Connect with engineers, designers, business thinkers, musicians, and scientists driven by imagination and entrepreneurship.
The Studio
The Studio is an artistic laboratory where you can experiment and explore with other budding artists and innovators. Collaboration fuels creativity in this living and learning environment featuring onsite rehearsal, study, drafting, and theater spaces.
Women in Science & Engineering
Unite with fellow women interested in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Learn about current research fields and hear from women in all types of STEM professions.
How to Join a Learning Community
- Sign your University Residence Halls contract and submit your advance payment in My UW Housing
- Prioritize learning communities over residence halls when you submit your hall preferences in My UW Housing
- Receive your room assignment
The learning community fee may be waived in cases of exceptional financial need by submitting a request for a fee waiver.
Tour a Learning Community
Learning community tours have been temporarily suspended.