A signature component of Loyola’s 2008-13 strategic plan, the Living Learning Initiative supports and enhances a vibrant campus climate that engages students, faculty, administrators, and the broader community in distinct and meaningful ways, including especially an emphasis on academic excellence and intellectual inquiry.

Since 2008, faculty, administrators, and students have worked to design and build a new, universal program that welcomes all first-year students to an integrated academic and social experience where living and learning occurs both in and outside of the classroom. Leveraging the successes and consolidating the aims of Loyola’s current first-year programs—the academically diverse small-class/core advisor model of the Alpha Program, the paired-classes/residential model of Collegium Program, and the collaborative/developmental model of FE100—this program aims both to enhance each student’s sense of personal connection to the campus community and to impress upon him or her the excitement and inherent value of intellectual inquiry and the life of the mind. In the rapidly changing world of higher education, this program is an opportunity for Loyola to reaffirm its Jesuit, Catholic mission and the values held by the institution while providing a unique and transformative living and learning experience to all first-year students.