Choose Your Cardinal Community

How to stay healthy with the pressures of your freshman year. Combat the Freshman 15 with fun and easy exercises and healthy eating tips. You will participate in fitness challenges, activities that will increase campus awareness, self-defense training, and safety awareness training as well as stress relief activities.

This community will be about getting involved with campus pride, peer support and interacting with new social groups, allowing your Lamar University passion associate you more deeply with campus connections. You have the ability to go to athletic events for free. You will learn how to get engaged with campus events and be part of a bigger campus picture.

This community will watch movies from all genres and generations to explore and bridge the cultural and generational differences among students and LU faculty and staff.

This community will focus on finding the right major by helping you to explore career opportunities within your degree by connecting with LU Alumni, finding potential internship opportunities, meeting LU academic departments to discuss programs and degree requirements.

This community will focus on health and fitness at a level that is comfortable for you. We will have discussions on healthy eating and living, supplements, different types of exercises. We will also have a fitness challenge!

How can we live a long and healthy life? This community will learn different ways to maintain a healthier lifestyle by discussing tips, facts, ideas and tools for success.

This community will be geared towards various laws that may affect campus life. Local law enforcement officers will be brought in to explain and demonstrate how to be safe on campus, the basics of defending yourself and how to react to situations so you don’t become a statistic.

Comic cons, in recent years, have evolved into more than just comic conventions, but have morphed into all things pop culture and cosplay and are all about welcoming people into one group. You will be exposed to comic con culture by meeting/Skyping with guest speakers. You also will be introduced to a “new wave” of psychologists who use fictional pop culture to explain psychology topics, such as using the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents and PTSD.

This community will be making gifts & cooking for people in need, ex. nursing homes, homeless shelter, Boys & Girls Club, YMCA, etc.

In this CC students will build connections and school pride while learning the art of making things themselves or  “ballin’ on a budget.”

This community is for students who love to read for fun and want to explore all different genres.

The goal of this Cardinal Community is to introduce students to the world of fine arts and visual culture they can begin exploring at Lamar. To develop as socially engaged citizens within both local and global contexts, members of this community will explore a variety of  arts and cultural practices and learn about related resources available to them on campus and in the surrounding community. In the process, students will learn about diverse communicative, study, and socialization strategies that will enrich campus life and encourage academic success.  

This community introduces you to the soft, but important skills of life after college. Topics such as resume/cover letter writing, interviewing skills, professional dress and etiquette, networking, time/stress management skills, and how to set and achieve are just a few of the topics that will be covered.

Students will develop skills to aid them in group projects, on teams, and in organizations. Students will also be exposed to positive, and fun, experiences in group situations, through various types of team building activities.

Students will learn the importance of blackboard, LU email, and other online resources provided by Lamar University. Students will also engage in discussions of online ethics, controversy, and the impact of their digital footprint in this digital age.

The main goal of this Cardinal Community is for participants to be both self-aware of their own identity-construction and to become active allies/advocates for the LGBTQ community on campus and in the broader community. You will explore the social constructions of gender and sexuality from a critical perspective. The exploration will include self-introspection and group discussion as well as hearing from guest speakers (e.g. a representative from Legacy Health, HRC, PFLAG, etc.). An examination of media representations (examples provided by the community participants) would also occur.

In this Cardinal Community students will learn how movies and the media portray people with disabilities.  The CC will watch films and have thoughtful discussions on their observations and explore other topics related to learning about different disabilities.  

First-generation students or first-gens are a diverse group of students. They span racial and national identities, income levels, genders, class, sexual orientation, and religious boundaries. The Cardinal Community is for many students: 

• students whose parents did not complete a four-year college degree
• students who are trying to navigate a large place like Lamar
• students who don’t have a college-bound tradition in their families or communities
• students with limited home support for their college career. 

Our goals with this community are to help first-gen students get the most out of their experiences at Lamar, to help first-gen students assess their talents and weaknesses, to create mentors and friendships, and to help first-gen students deal with the emotional, psychological, and financial struggles of college. 

You will explore campus resources geared toward Biology and Environmental Science Students. Tour the Biology Department facilities and connect with faculty, current students and professionals from their major. This will give an edge to a class of freshmen and contribute to your academic success.

You will gain an understanding of how computers and technology are being used to solve problems and achieve a better quality of life for everyone on earth. Following career paths available to college graduates, specific topics will highlight areas in high demand including mobile computing, game development, artificial intelligence, machine learning, medical image processing, real-time systems and security.

You will explore your major and related career opportunities. You will study together, do community service together, and create friendships that will outlast the bounds of college. Here are some activities that you will participate in: Meet representatives from law enforcement agencies such as the FBI, Secret Service, SWAT, and US marshals, Tour the Beaumont Police Department & Museum, CJSA coordinated events such as going to the shooting. Students will also participate in social events (paintball…)

The main goals of the pre-nursing community is to reduce stress, provide a nurturing environment, and build relationships among students with a common goal of becoming a nurse. Some of the program activities include stress and time management techniques, organization strategies, relaxation techniques, team building exercises. You will also explore aspects of the nursing profession that you are interested in and will have the opportunity to meet nurses from your chosen field.

Students will explore their major and related career opportunities. Students will study together, and create friendships that will outlast the bounds of college. Students will network with professors from the department, professionals from the field and more advanced students. Students will participate in hands on activities and also learn about future research opportunities.

This CC Freshman introduces Lamar University Freshman Business Majors to the college of business, its faculty, staff, and administrators, and to the world of business, in general. This community gives students a behind-the-scenes look at how the College of Business operates, what its mission and goals are, and how they relate to your opportunities to succeed both at Lamar and in your future careers.

Introduction of engineering fields to students so that they can experience the creative and diverse side of engineering and gain more interest in engineering.

Healthy nutrition is a lifestyle choice! Open to both majors and non-majors, in this community students will be learning more about nutrition including: healthy eating; menu make-overs; portion distortion; fad diets; nutrition careers; etc. 

Incoming Freshmen would join a community of more advanced ASL majors (SO, JR, SR). The community uses a buddy system and pairs incoming freshmen with upper-level students, so you can form relationships with each other and make college more enjoyable. You will also explore career opportunities. In break off sessions, you will explore real life application information relating to the field of deafness and professional organizations that relate to deafness according to their specific track.

This community will provide purposeful support to the freshmen communication students through information discovery sessions, movie nights, study sessions and social gatherings.

Major students will join the Speech and Hearing community to network with upper undergrad classmen, graduate students and faculty members. You will gain the opportunity to participate in social mixers as well as in Speech and Hearing service activities and gain hands-on experience. The community will also hold sessions on college life skills and transition.