BY LANA SPENDL | MARCH 6, 2019
Following a trip to Ireland in 2018, INSPIRE Living-Learning Center at Indiana University Bloomington plans to take seven students to Puerto Rico in the summer of 2019.
Fifty-four students who plan to become educators reside at INSPIRE, and the center regularly organizes seminar discussions, excursions, service-learning experiences, and special events that facilitate student-faculty interactions. “Learning does not only happen in the classroom,” said assistant director Diana Velázquez. “It also happens where students live.”
Grace McDougall, a sophomore who moved into INSPIRE during her freshman year last year, said, “As undergrads, we’re getting a lot of theory, but applying it also matters.” McDougall finds the communal experience of the LLC supportive, hands-on, and fun. She returned to the center this year to be a peer leader, because she wanted to create for other students the sense of community she herself experienced as a freshman.