The University of Maryland’s Carillon Communities living-learning program will reduce its student enrollment by more than 65 percent beginning this fall.
Currently, the program consists of 13 communities and about 375 students, according to this university. The change, which was announced to Carillon faculty members last October, will reduce the program to three communities and about 130 students beginning in the 2025-26 academic year, this university’s undergraduate studies office wrote in a statement to The Diamondback.
“We are committed to enhancing the opportunities we provide to students for engaged learning through special programs like Carillon Communities,” the statement read. “[We] want to learn more about what is working well in our programs and where we might operate more effectively.”
Carillon Communities is a one year living-learning program for first-year students that aims to foster problem-solving and collaborative skills development, while also fulfilling general education requirements, according to the program’s website.
The three communities offered after the reduction will be iGive, Constitutional Rights and Deliberative Democracy, according to the undergraduate studies office.
The program’s reduction has raised many concerns among faculty members and students, who say the smaller program would lead to decreased interest due to the lack of variety in subjects.
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Carillon gives students opportunities to experience new subjects and ways of thinking that they may not have otherwise been exposed to, according to atmospheric and oceanic sciences associate professor Tim Canty.
Canty noted that most students in Carillon’s Weather and Climate community were not science majors. As a Carillon faculty member, Canty saw how the program made related topics relevant to students’ respective studies, he said.
The variety in previously offered communities also allowed for creative partnership between involved faculty members, geology department chair James Farquhar said.
Carillon faculty would share data, research and questions across communities to supplement each other’s programs, Farquhar said. Reducing communities will lower collaborative opportunities and the program’s richness, he added.
“We lose a connection to present [Carillon] students in the university,” Farquhar said. “With any program, there’s an identity, and then there’s a value, and you’re gonna lose a little bit of both.”
Central Carillon staff have been relocated to other positions on campus and the remaining communities will be run by existing staff members, according to the undergraduate studies office.
Canty and Farquhar said they will not be involved in the Carillon program next year after the reduction, but are open to being involved again in the future.
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Canty said that while his role in the weather and climate community was a rewarding experience, he would like to see the program on “very sound financial footing” before he would choose to be involved again.
“I don’t want to go through that again,” Canty said. “Building something up, and then getting that pulled away at the last minute without any warning.”
Junior criminal justice and psychology major Lucy MacCormack was a student in the Art and Activism community, and said she chose the community because of how different the content was compared to her majors.
“It really offered me a perspective that I wouldn’t have without taking that class,” MacCormack said.
MacCormack anticipates the reduction in communities may also reduce prospective student interest. She may not have enrolled in the program if there were only three communities, MacCormack added.
Uthkarsh Tolapu, a junior computer science and math major, was part of the iGive community during his freshman year and was later a teaching assistant for IDEA101, a course for students in all Carillon communities, he said.
As an international student, Carillon’s ability to make a large campus feel smaller helped him make friends and transition to a new environment, Tolapu said.
Freshman neurobiology and physiology major Nora Budavari said she valued the small class sizes and connected community when meeting new people as a student in Carillon’s Bats in Society program. She is curious about how the three concentrated communities will impact class sizes, she said.
But the program’s reduction may allow Carillon to fine-tune the three remaining communities, she explained.
“Maybe it doesn’t really give students all the opportunities that they may have wanted to explore,” Budavari said. “But … maybe those three communities are more polished and more refined and maybe it will give students a more useful experience.”
