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All Michigan Learning Communities (MLCs) pride themselves on their student-to-faculty ratios, innovative courses, and supportive community environments that help make the large U-M campus smaller and more accessible.

With many MLCs to choose from, you might be wondering which MLC is best for you. Here are some things that make the Lloyd Scholars for Writing and the Arts (LSWA) special!

We challenge our students to use art and writing as a means to make a change in the world–and in themselves! Through our curriculum, programming, student leadership opportunities, faculty involvement, focused skill-building workshops, and cultural events, we hope to cultivate students' critical reading, writing, arts, and thinking skills to promote the link between creativity, academic excellence, and effecting change.

Although LSWA is a community focused on writing and the arts, LSWA is not just for art and writing majors. Regardless of your academic interests or focus, you can benefit from tapping into and developing your creative skills. Business students, architecture majors, mathematicians, and social activists have all benefited from the courses, workshops, clubs, and co-curricular activities that LSWA provides.

LSWA offers a variety of small, seminar-style, experiential-based writing and arts courses, which you take with your LSWA friends right in the residence hall. From writing courses that fulfill your first-year writing requirement to unique interdisciplinary classes that allow you to experiment with writing and art, LSWA will help you fulfill your U-M requirements in innovative ways.

All our writing courses are taught by faculty from the Sweetland Center for Writing, and students often go on to minor in writing or become peer tutors. Examples of courses include Writing and Television, Children’s Books, and PhotoBooks. Check out our course guides to see all that LSWA offers!

LSWA members also get involved in clubs focused on writing and the arts. Clubs are run and organized by students, and are as diverse as they are creative! Film, Poetry Writing & Performance, Practical Arts, Calligraphy, Art as Activism, Music Practice & Performance, Arts & Literary Journal, and even “The Sit-Down” (featured in above image; LSWA’s radio show/podcast)– these are just a few of the clubs and organizations in which you can get involved.

LSWA students have opportunities to advance their writing and artwork during their undergraduate careers. LSWA publishes an Arts & Literary Journal annually that presents an excellent opportunity for students to submit their work to be published. LSWA also sponsors the Caldwell Poetry Awards, with cash prizes for writing and performances, as well as scholarships to the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, where students attend a week-long creative writing workshop in Martha’s Vineyard.

Furthermore, LSWA participates in Festifools, an Ann Arbor street art festival. Established first in LSWA as an Art and Public Spaces class, students have the opportunity to create giant puppets to parade down Main Street every year for the Ann Arbor community.

You will have many opportunities to take on paid leadership roles in the program, from Residential Assistants (RAs) to Student Assistants (SAs) to Creative Mentors (CMs) to Student Recruiters (SRs). Student leaders work together to support the program and the first year students through direct mentorship, and by managing clubs and events related to writing and the arts. As an LSWA leader, you will gain leadership, mentoring, and communication skills–and you can be paid for it!

Student leaders can even influence the programming structure for the academic year by starting clubs, suggesting events and performances to attend, and contributing their own expertise to activities such as musical performances and poetry slams.

LSWA is located in the recently renovated Alice Lloyd Hall. Take a walk through the building! The building features many amenities, including an art studio, dance studio, vocal and music performance studios, classroom/study areas, and recreational spaces.