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The Quest Community

Starting from the first day, students form tight bonds with their fellow Quest-mates through the Launch week orientation. Quest provides students with a safe, comfortable space to be themselves, to engage in meaningful discussions to further their critical thinking, to explore creativity, and to deepen their cultural awareness. Throughout the year, there are ample opportunities for students to work in different groups for collaboration and feedback. There is built in time for daily mentorship and support from Quest Advisors; and community members make time to celebrate occasions, share meals and music, and swap life stories together. All of this helps support the social-emotional wellbeing of learners. Many students describe the Quest community as feeling more like family and the Quest room becomes their home away from home.

a small learning community

We often hear Quest students comment on how comfortable they feel among each other and within the Quest learning space. The space has been described as "home away from home", and their Questmates describe the tremendous sense of belonging to a tight-knit community that feels more like family. Each year, due to the amount of time students spend together on and off campus, and the unique learning and community structure of the program, Quest students find themselves making new close friendships, some who we are sure will become lifelong friends.

The quest space: a flexible work space

Every learner needs different things at different times, and this includes the space in which learning and work happens. The Quest space was designed to be a learning lab for piloting flexible learning and work spaces. For this reason, the Quest room provides a range spaces for students to work independently or collaboratively. Visitors of the Quest room often remark on how inviting and calming the Quest space feels. The aesthetic of the Quest space was designed intentionally to provide plenty of natural light and provide an open and airy ambiance in the main learning spaces, while carving out smaller huddle spaces for students to work in small groups or individually. The space has been compared to flexible work co-op work spaces for startups, entrepreneurs, and small companies.

In Quest students have options for where they want to work. This allows students to control their workspace to optimize their workflow, based on their own needs. Each space offers different seating, lighting and size of space. We understand that when students feel comfortable and can control some environmental factors of their workspace, productivity can be maximized.

The Quest Library

This cozy room provides students a quiet space to work or hold meetings or give presentations to small groups

The Quest Conference room

This meeting space is often used for meetings, presentations, small-group lessons.

The kitchen & dining area

The Quest space features a kitchenette available for student use. The dining area provides a gathering space for shared meals, an additional area for lessons, group and individual work, and can converted to a lab space for science labs or project-based learning and workshops.

The Living room: a comfortable, Flexible learning space

The main learning space in the Quest room, often referred to as the "living room" rather than the classroom due to the comfortable sofa seating, can be quickly reconfigured for whole-class instruction, formal presentations, or smaller collaborative group work areas.

Flexible Work SPaces: Work Stations and booths

The Quest room is equipped with three adjustable height desks (for sitting or standing) for independent work, and an open-seating booth, work tables that accommodate up to eight people, and one acoustic booth that seats two people. The booths provide a quieter space for students to work that help students eliminate visual distractions for independent work, or provide a great huddle space for small group work or meetings.

the acoustic booth

Whether a student needs a quiet space to work without noise or distractions, hold a more private meeting, participate in a Zoom call with their mentor or partnership supervisor, or create audio or video recordings, the acoustic booth gives students an additional option for a workspace.

Adulting 101

The Quest space features a kitchenette, providing students an opportunity to share a kitchen area with their Quest-mates. At various times throughout the year, students will also have opportunities to cook and share prepared meals together.

The kitchenette affords students access to a refrigerator, microwave, air-fryer, various types of coffee makers, a kettle, and other kitchen appliances, as well as shared food storage space. Similar to having roommates or flatmates at university, students develop working agreements on how they will use this shared space, including contributing shared basic kitchen staples (coffee, tea, sugar, snacks) and holding each other accountable for keeping the kitchen clean.

shared meals for community gatherings

Throughout the year, Quest will host community gatherings for students, parents, prospective families, and community partners. Students may play a role in the planning and coordinating of these events, as well as the set-up and clean-up of these events.

Adulting 101: planning and cooking a meal

Each year, students are given opportunities to plan and prepare meals together--whether in the Quest room or in the MS Cooking Class space. These events may be student-led, teacher-led, or facilitated by local chefs brought in for a more formal cooking class.

Adulting 101: Use & clean-up of the kitchen space

Quest students love being able to use the kitchen space throughout the day --whether it is their Quest day and they can use the space for breakfast, lunch or snacks, or during breaks when they have non-Quest classes and they want to stop in to make coffee, tea, or grab a snack from the fridge or their cohort's cabinet.

Work hard, play hard - Quest Community gallery

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