More Than the Sum of Its Parts: Learning Communities at LaGuardia

“Learning communities don’t run on goodwill. They require deep collaboration, shared vision, and constant communication.”

Case Study

When Professor Naomi Stubbs first got involved in learning communities at LaGuardia Community College, she saw a chance to reframe what liberal arts education could look like. “Students are given a checklist of courses they need, a little bit of this, a little bit of that,” she explains. “But there’s rarely a conversation about why you need your math course or what makes taking philosophy as an undergrad meaningful.” Learning communities offer a different path, a way for students to see how their courses are connected, and for faculty to help students engage across disciplinary boundaries.

Stubbs came to LaGuardia with a background in theater and quickly realized she didn’t want to teach in an environment where all her students were in the same discipline-specific major. Instead, she found herself energized by the diversity of thought and experience at a community college. “You have your business majors, your philosophy majors, all taking a creative expression course. And those conversations, those intersections—make everything richer.” One of the early learning communities she developed and coordinated brought together math and theater, a deliberate attempt to bridge what many theater students saw as an academic divide. “They were doing things like scale models and lighting design, and experiencing how you do need math as a theater major.”

In the early days, Stubbs taught in full clusters, where students took a full schedule of linked classes around a theme. Her first cluster combined Introduction to Theater, Philosophy, English 101, and English 103, along with a one-hour integrative seminar. Learning Communities like this one focus on a central theme. Through the connected classes, assignments are shared, themes drawn out, and intersections explored, all while completing the requirements of the individual courses. This integration and connection across courses is a key component of what makes Learning Communities so effective.

For Stubbs, learning communities are a high impact practice not just because of their structure, but because of what they yield. “You do a lot of work up front, but the return is tenfold, in student learning, student engagement, and faculty engagement. It’s greater than the sum of its parts.”

She also emphasizes that students often don’t realize they’re in a learning community at first. Because of sometimes fragmented registration and advising processes, students end up in a learning community without knowing what it is. But they feel the difference. “They don’t necessarily realize it unless they compare it to another class. But they see the same people. They form a community. They go on break together. They support each other.”

This built-in network matters, especially on a commuter campus like LaGuardia’s. Stubbs describes a classroom space that’s more than just learning content. Students look out for one another; they share notes; they keep each other updated. In contrast, students in standalone courses often don’t even know each other’s names. “They come in, do the work, and leave.”

The difference extends to faculty coordination as well. Learning community faculty collaborate on assignments, due dates, policies, and platforms. This makes the experience more coherent for students and allows faculty to better understand the challenges and opportunities of other portions of their students’ curriculum.

Stubbs distinguishes between first-year and upper-level learning communities. Early on, students are figuring out what they want to study and whether college is right for them. “It helps them figure out how to navigate college while completing foundational courses. It overlaps with what the First Year Seminar is trying to do.” In contrast, upper-level learning communities, usually offered as pairs, help students consolidate their learning and begin networking for the future. “You see students sharing on-the-ground knowledge, about transferring, about jobs, about what’s next.”

She also acknowledges the challenges. Registration systems, technology, and shifting institutional priorities often make it difficult to run learning communities. “It’s like whack-a-mole. Every time I think we’ve figured something out, there’s something else.” Faculty buy-in, program director alignment, and administrative support are all essential. “If we don’t have those layers in place, we don’t have learning communities.”

Despite the obstacles, Stubbs is a passionate supporter of learning communities. “Even the headaches, the last-minute declustering, the small enrollments, I still think it’s worth it.”

The end-of-semester showcase is a highlight when students really begin to understand what they’ve achieved. “At the showcase, students begin to take pride in their accomplishments, and students and faculty alike can see what is exceptional about this learning experience.”

Stubbs believes reflection is where students truly grasp what they’ve accomplished. “We prompt them to think about how things were connected, and that’s when they see it,” she says. Faculty, too, benefit from this reflection. “You don’t realize how sophisticated your teaching is until you have to articulate it.”

Her advice to faculty? “Learning communities don’t happen organically. It’s work. If you don’t coordinate, you just get a block schedule. And you lose all the benefits.”

Stubbs wants to see learning communities thoughtfully scaled, starting with a few majors, with flexibility for part-time and transfer students. And she’s still driven by that early excitement: “We were exploring, writing, researching, together. That’s what learning should be.”

Courses Targeting High Impact Practices

• Courses across many departments

Other High Impact Practices Used

• First-Year Experience
• ePortfolio
• Collaborative Assignments and Projects

About

Naomi Stubbs is Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College, and Liberal Studies at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She coordinates the Learning Communities program at LaGuardia