CU-Boulder is a great university, in a great place to live, where you can get a great education. It is also a very big university: 27,000 undergraduates and 5500 (or more) freshmen. Many of our introductory classes, even classes with some of the best teachers you can find anywhere, are also big—100 or more students in a lecture—and there are literally hundreds of classes to choose from. It can be overwhelming and incredibly impersonal, especially at first.
Residential Academic Programs (RAPs) like the Sewall Hall program are one way the university helps first year students make the transition to university life. RAPs create community by putting students into one small course (18 to 20 students) per semester, in classrooms inside their dorms, with faculty who have offices inside those dorms. The students you see in class are the students you see in the hallways and in the cafeteria after class. Planning a late night study session with your classmates before an exam? Walk across the hall instead of across the campus. Do you need to talk to your professor about the class you are taking or about the university in general? You can usually find them in their office down the hall from your room. Is your RAP class your first class of the day? Go to school in your slippers if you want to. RAPs have program assistants in the dorms who can help you with registration and other issues.
That is, RAPs give you a place where you can feel at home, where people know you. Your faculty will know your name and, more important, they will have a chance to know you as a person. If you do great, we will know it and applaud it; if you don’t, we will know that too, and will see how we can help you. No one is anonymous in a RAP, and we work hard to be sure that no one slips through the cracks.
Don’t take our word for it. Here are some things that Sewall students have told us:
I thought I was prepared for such a big adjustment, but nobody can mentally prepare you for college….I made it through the first few weeks of school thanks to the nurturing environment of Sewall.
….[M]y older friends at CU and my tour leaders said that Sewall was by far the best dorm, not only because of its beautiful exterior and location, but because the people become so close-knit. I soon came to realize how true this is.
Overall my time in Sewall Hall has helped me to become accustomed to the college life. It has created a place where I feel safe and secure as well as a place where I can expand my knowledge. Sewall has enabled me to learn a great deal about myself.
Living in the Sewall Residence hall gave me a taste of the real world while still having the safety net of close friends for encouragement and support….Having my teachers working in the same building as I lived in made it very easy to get extra assistance with my classes and work. I do not feel that I would have gotten this in a regular lecture class setting.
The friendships I have developed in Sewall are the strongest relationships I have ever built in my life.
