In recent years, learning communities--a curricular innovation that integrates different facets of the undergraduate experience to enhance and enrich learning--have become the most promising new strategy for promoting student success and satisfaction in college. Now campus professionals have a practical, insightful guide to the essentials of this timely and rewarding new program area, including how to design, fund, staff, manage, and integrate learning communities into different campuses. Drawing from their own experience as well as from experiences of campuses around the country, Nancy S. Shapiro and Jodi H. Levine present a pragmatic blueprint for creating a learning community that can be adapted to almost any campus culture--including specific guidance ranging from who should be placed on planning committees to samples of syllabi for interdisciplinary courses, sample clusters of classes, monthly activity calendars, lists of competencies and expected student outcomes, and other operational program models.