DeKALB | Jessi LeDonne, an art education major, lives in the Fine Arts House in Neptune North, but that wasn’t always the case.

LeDonne is enrolled in Housing and Dining’s Academic Residential Program (ARP). ARPs allow students with similar majors and/or interests to live in a particular building, wing or floor.

LeDonne, a freshman, was originally a Grant Tower A resident. After hauling to and fro 24-by-18 inch pads of paper for her drawing class, cutting boards, markers, Exacto knives, a 24-inch ruler, and not to mention her art bin. LeDonne felt moving to Neptune North was her only option.

“Neptune North is closer to the art building, where the majority of my classes are,” she said. “I have a lot of things to carry to class. The rooms are bigger and I need a lot of space to work on my projects.”

The first Academic Residential Program at NIU was the Foreign Language Residence Program (FLRP) in 1972. Following FLRP, many university programs gained themed floors: the political science floor, the engineering floor and the computer science floor. These academic floor programs were the foundation of the ARP House structure at NIU today.

“Students who participate in Academic Residential Programs have more of an opportunity to develop relationships with faculty outside of the classroom, to become exposed to possible career fields within a given major by going on the many field trips and meeting those professionals already in the working world by attending panel discussions,” said Heather Gates, assistant housing director of Lincoln and Douglas.

The deaf interest floor, which combines hearing and hard of hearing students, accommodates their residents by providing all students access to special equipment such as visual doorbells, visual fire alarm systems, amplified headsets for telephones, TTY (TeleTYpewriter) or TDD (Telecommunication Device for the Deaf) phones and television with closed captioning.

“Living with people who have the same interest and/or major can help the average student feel more comfortable and know they have other students on their floor taking the same classes, having the same professors or TAs,” Gates said.

Many of the academic houses have qualifications concerning enrollment within the house, like a certain GPA and a specific number of programs per semester that members must participate in, Gates said.

While there is a $50 charge per semester to live in an ARP House, the money goes to house programming. Past programs include visits to the King Tut exhibit, Fright Fest, Fermilab, the Chicago Board of Trade, the Shakespeare Theater and the Museum of Science and Industry.