By Monette Austin Bailey

Queen Anne’s Hall will be home to the new Digital Cultures and Creativity living and learning community starting this fall.

Christopher Robeck can’t wait for move-in next month. The freshman communication and theatre major is looking forward to “the menagerie of different people” he’ll live with in Queen Anne’s Hall. People, like him, who create cyber art, share ideas and thrive in virtual worlds as much as they do in the material world.

He’ll be part of the Digital Cultures and Creativity, or DCC, Honors College living and learning community. It is one of three new communities starting this fall; the others are the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program, or EIP, (LaPlata Hall) sponsored by the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute, or Mtech; and a new College Park Scholars program, Global Public Health (Cumberland Hall). Like Maryland’s other acclaimed living and learning programs, all three are for freshmen and sophomores looking to establish deeper bonds with their peers and instructors.

“The reason I got pulled into DCC is because of the instructors,” says Robeck. “On orientation day, some were very passionate. … They really wanted this program to be a collaboration between two very different cultures,” technology and liberal arts.

Matt Kirschenbaum, director of DCC, associate director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities and associate professor of English, says faculty and staff worked for months to craft an exceptional learning experience.

“DCC will be a home for the digital native, for those who’ve grown up with these new technologies,” he says. Approximately 55 students will start the program, which has a capacity of 75. “We wanted to carve out a space for students … who are active producers of content. They don’t just post videos. They have their own YouTube channel or they are aspiring game designers.”

Donna Hamilton, dean of undergraduate studies, chairs the provost’s committee that reviews proposals for living and learning programs. They selected three of the approximately 11 put forward for the fall. Some of the criteria for approval are that each new community “be highly attractive to the incoming freshmen that we’re trying to recruit and their parents,” she says. “And there has to be a very strong concept. What is it? What are you going to be doing?”

Jay Smith, director of EIP, says he hopes the 75 students in his program will learn to help shape future economies. It’s at times when economies are underperforming and change is afoot that fresh ideas and entrepreneurship blossom, he says. Smith envisions students using Maryland’s entrepreneurial tools, such as the Tech Entrepreneur Research and Prototyping Startup Laboratory, as resources.

“We’ll have this critical mass of high-performing students. … We’ll stick them all in a Petri dish where they’ll feed off of each other’s energy and creativity,” he says.

Incoming freshman Zach Rom, whose interests include medicine, science, technology and helping people, chose Maryland because of EIP.

“This program offers everyone in it a chance to get up and do it. It’s hard to motivate yourself by yourself,” he says. “I have a chance to do something and there’s someone there to help.”

It’s a concept proven by the 16-year-old Scholars program. It graduates some of the university’s highest-achieving and socially engaged students from its 14 different units, according to Director Greig Stewart. Maryland’s oldest living and learning program’s newest community stems from the university’s growing health expertise. With accreditation three years ago of the School of Public Health and the university’s increasing global reach, the new offering makes sense, say organizers.

Students will have opportunities to put classroom knowledge into practice in clinics and facilities in surrounding Prince George’s County and as part of a winter term course in India, says Stewart.

Robeck also looks forward to the friendships that will form in his living and learning community. “Even at orientation, it was like, ‘I’m DCC, too.’ It gives you something to talk about right away.”