What You Need to Know
What is a residential college?
The residential college is a living situation which is meant to extend the college learning environment outside the classroom and into the living environment. Centered around themes, these colleges offer programing and social events to further enrich the college experience.
What is CCS’s theme?
CCS stands for the Residential College of Cultural and Community Studies. As the name states, we are centered around the idea of sharing community and culture, and examine their impact on our lives. CCS strives to explore these themes with trips to different locations in Chicago, firesides, informal chats, tutorials and the recently created Community Service Initiative.
Res College Vocab
Firesides – Informal lectures put on by faculty, fellows, community members or fellow students. These are meant to explore issues or topics of interest for CCSers.
Forum – Weekly house meeting led by the Executive Board to inform CCSers of upcoming events, talk about house issues, vote on trips, etc. Forums are generally held Sunday nights at 9pm.
Fellows – Northwestern faculty members who are associated with the residential college. They are invited to weekly fellows lunches and to various dorm events, where the student/professor relationship is broken down and they are allowed to interact in a more informal setting.
Munchies – Weekly snack breaks/movie nights that all CCSers are invited to! A staple event of any/all res colleges.
Olay – Our mascot and the red panda that you’ve been seeing everywhere on this site (look at the favicon).
Points – Many events associated with CCS will have a corresponding points value (for example, attending weekly forum gives you 4 points). Points are used to determine housing priority for the next year.
What to look forward to
- RCB Formal: RCB offers a trip to a cool event venue in Chicago for a night of dancing and fun! CCS heavily subsidizes or completely covers tickets.
- Fellows Meals: get to know our faculty fellows over a meal at Sarge. CCS shares a private dining room with Slivka!
- Weekly Munchies: A couple students each week choose a movie and snacks for us all to enjoy.
- Volunteering
- Trips with fellows to neighborhoods in Chicago like Argyle, Pilsen, and Chinatown
- Firesides: learn about interesting things like wilderness survival, black holes, or 20th century children’s literature from fellows and students.
- Excursions into Chicago – ice skating in Millennium Park, going to Boystown for Halloween – we love going into the city!
Living in CCS
Residents and non-residents earn points in order to be eligible to live in CCS the following year. To return to CCS, residents must earn a certain number of points in spring through winter quarter. Members who were not at Northwestern the previous spring do not receive a handicap, but are generally able to reach the amount of points required. The points cut-off for non-residents is half of the points cut-off for residents.
Residents of other res colleges may transfer their housing eligibility to CCS by contacting the Presidents of both dorms before Friday of reading week in winter quarter.
Order for choosing rooms is determined by points and priority. Priority is determined by the amount of points accumulated.
Students can become non-residents at CCS by paying non-res dues and filling out this form. Non-reses can participate in all CCS activities and may receive building access. A non-res may also live in CCS in the following year by earning a certain number of points. For more information about becoming a non-res, go here.
More for New Residents:
Facilities – learn about the 2303 Sheridan building and helpful information about rooms
Where to Eat – learn about the on-campus options for food, as well as Evanston restaurant recommendations
What to Bring – a comprehensive packing list that will help you before move-in day
Why Live in CCS? – more testimonials about why CCS is so great!