Amid the organized chaos surrounding Creighton’s Heider Hall, Katherine Cole, the graduate assistant for the Cortina Community, works quietly at her entrance desk. She smiles warmly at passing students checking in as they prepare to navigate the noisy and construction filled halls surrounding the sophomore dorm. It is a new place for Cole amid the plywood walls and spray-painted outlines for windows, but it is one she is excited to get settled into.
After three years of being based out of Creighton’s Deglman Hall, the Cortina Community has found a new home within the walls of Heider Hall. The move brings various changes to the service and faith-based living-learning community, most notably that new freshmen in the program will no longer be living in community with their classmates or fellow sophomores.
Though the transition to Heider brings changes to the community, organizers believe the change is necessary.
“Part of it was our growing class numbers,” said Cole. “There [are] fewer and fewer rooms in the traditional freshmen halls for us to have sophomores living there.”
Heider Hall is currently being renovated and will be under construction until mid-to-late November.
“When the construction is complete we’ll have a lot of community space that can be used for freshmen and Cortina programming,” said Cole.
Upon completion, the ground floor of Heider will contain a brand new classroom and a variety of community spaces for large meetings and discussion-based learning.
“Having a classroom here means that some of the Cortina classes might be able to meet in the hall for a change,” said Cole.
The move to Heider allows sophomores in Cortina to live in a community with their fellow classmates and have access to newer and larger living accommodations.
Cole explained that the change was intended to help aid in the freshmen’s already stressful transition into college.
“Cortina is an intensive program focused on service, faith and justice; we try to mold our students to focus on those things through service every week, group formation times, and also living together in community,” she said. “For freshman who are just getting on campus and maybe having their first going away from home experience, that’s a lot for them to take in, it’s hard to also ask them to live in that community right off the bat.”
Freshmen in the Cortina community live among their classmates in the four freshmen residence halls across campus. Cole other leaders of the Cortina Community are encouraged by the move as it allows the new “Cortinians” to branch out and have a larger presence among the greater Creighton community.
The change is also being viewed positively by students involved in Cortina.
Matthew Tolliver, a College of Nursing sophomore in the Cortina Community, jokingly noted that the move eliminates the view of Cortina as “an enigmatic group of hippies that live and take classes together”.
Tolliver talked about how the change in community living builds upon the idea that “students in Cortina are normal people who enjoy talking and across campus. Cole other leaders of the Cortina Community are encouraged by the move as it allows the new “Cortinians” to branch out and have a larger presence among the greater Creighton community.
The change is also being viewed positively by students involved in Cortina.
Matthew Tolliver, a College of Nursing sophomore in the Cortina Community, jokingly noted that the move eliminates the view of Cortina as “an enigmatic group of hippies that live and take classes together.”
Tolliver talked about how the change in community living builds upon the idea that “students in Cortina are normal people who enjoy talking and sharing with their peers. Cortina has always striven to include others and open a dialogue about service, faith and social justice”
Tolliver also noted that though the community has moved, its mission remains the same.
“Cortina’s goal is to open the eyes of people to things they may not be comfortable with or know about.” Tolliver said, “It’s easy to get stuck inside of a bubble when you’re at Creighton, and Cortina will continue to take students outside of it.”
Though in a new home, “the Cortina Community remains rooted in its tradition to prepare students to connect their passion for justice with their future goals by challenging them to investigate social inequalities and difficult realities in a vulnerable way,” according to the Cortina Community website.