The Global Housing at Saint Michael’s College

There are many different types of living options at Saint Michael’s College. We have regular dormitories, suites, apartments and townhouses. Students elect their preferred room based on their lottery in April. In addition, there are also some factors influencing students getting a lottery with a good or bad number.

(Yellow=Dormitory, Orange=Suite, Black=Apartment, Blue=Townhouse)

The first one is what year a student is. If you are a rising senior, you will definitely have the preferential right to choose your lottery, then juniors and sophomores. The next factor is your GPA, because the higher GPA you have, the better lottery number lottery you can get. I think this is a very fair way to determine what kind of housing you will receive. Because every student has the same right in the school, the only way to determine who has more privilege is dependent on their academic performance.

(My suite's lounge-GEAR housing)

However, for international students, there is a different choice. Because our college really cares and wants to improve national students’ competency, our college has created a program called GEAR (Global Experience Academic Residential Program) in a suites hall. This is a housing especially for international students, as well as American students who want to hang out with international students.

(Indian Food)

(Japanese Night)

(Saudi Arabian Kebab)

The biggest difference between GEAR housing and other housing is that each suite in GEAR has to create an event for its floor, and invite anyone and everyone to come. The event can be any activity, but the school mainly wants residents to bring more cultural events from different countries. Why? Because it is very important to let the students know how important understanding different countries’ cultures, languages and even economics are in modern times.

(Bowling Night)

For example, my suite created a bowling night because most of our events were held in the building. But this time, I want to bring my residents off campus to go outside the school. I booked two 12 seat school vans for my event, but more than 24 residents came to join us. This proved a very successful event because everyone was bowling until around midnight! We had a blast!

(Bowling Night)

In general, I have seen many fun activities in our international suite - such as Saudi Arabian students cooking kebab, Indian dance, Japanese night, Chinese dumplings, and carving pumpkins. In addition, every international student is not an English native speaker, so studying in the U.S can sometimes be stressful. In order to help international students to relax mentally, our school also prepares a meditation trainer for international students every Tuesday night!  It is not usual to see A university creating such a cool international housing experience, and preparing so many valuable events for international students on a small campus, but Saint Michael’s College does it. As an RA and a resident in GEAR housing, I can feel our school pays a lot of attention and energy to international students and our daily needs. This is what makes Saint Michael’s College special.

(Bowling Night-GEAR Residents)