The connection between housing and academics can take several forms. Regardless of what the program is called, though, student success remains the common goal.
Interview by James A. Baumann
To tweak an old saying, if you’ve seen one living-learning program, you’ve seen one living-learning program. The term and its variations (living-learning communities, faculty-in-residence, residential colleges, and first-year initiatives, not to mention theme, specialty, or program housing, to name a few) have been applied to a host of models aimed at strengthening connections between residential students and academic goals.
While these names are often used interchangeably, the programs and their components should not be; they are carefully crafted to fit the campus they serve. Factors such as budget, population size, staffing, campus and departmental missions, reporting structure, faculty willingness or capacity, and more are all connected to what shape or form a campus’s program will take and how outcomes will be assessed.
To better understand the similarities and differences between these programs, the Talking Stick brought together Amanda Krier-Jenkins, associate director of university housing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and Carl Krieger, director of residential life at Purdue University. Along with their professional roles, they are also among the organizers for this year’s ACUHO-I Academic Initiatives Conference and the Residential College Symposium, respectively. This year, the two events are being held concurrently in Portland, Oregon, allowing them to share space and speakers as well as encourage knowledge sharing and engagement between the housing professionals and faculty in attendance. If nothing else, they can model good behavior for the students back on their campuses.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Talking Stick: Let’s start with what might be a basic question, but one that is important to clarify. How do you differentiate a residential college program from a living-learning program, a faculty-in-residence program, or all the other housing and academic programs? What are the differences, and where is the overlap?
Carl Krieger: When I talk about residential colleges, I talk about them as a subset of the larger umbrella of living-learning communities (LLCs). There are specific pieces and parts of a residential college. The Residential College Society website provides a list of the important research and scholarship about these colleges, and the Collegiate Way website describes the “educational foundations of the collegiate model,” includes a directory of residential colleges, and features research by Robert O'Hara, author of “How to Build a Residential College” as well as other publications geared towards developing an international view of the residential college.
The theme of one of my presentations is “When Is a Residential College Not a Residential College?” What’s important is not if you've achieved all the espoused goals for a residential college but instead if you have a desire and are pushing toward an environment where the students are engaged together around a concept of learning. Of course, that also intersects very much with a living-learning community. The faculty member in a residential college guides the intellectual purpose of the residential college, which veers a little bit away from that larger umbrella of learning communities.
The role of the faculty member in a residential college is unique. The link between the residential life department and the residential college is a partnership. The staff member can serve as a support agent for the faculty member or in many cases can be the driver, while the faculty member is the support agent. It's a reversal of their priorities and their roles. I remember doing job interviews for a residence life staff member for a residential college. It was difficult at first to have those conversations because we went through a number of candidates who were not used to giving up that ownership and that power. They would talk about their vision for the college, but those were not the candidates we wanted. We eventually did find a candidate who said, “My vision is whatever the vision is of the faculty member.”
Amanda Krier-Jenkins: I'm not a specialist in residential colleges, but I do think of them as one portion of a way to implement a broader academic initiative. There are many living-learning communities being discussed at the Academic Initiatives Conference, but there are also broader residential education topics that are being addressed. Every school is going to define LLCs a little bit differently. Some of the conference sessions are led by faculty, but many are led by residence life staff. Some programs are looking at things like curriculum, assessment, training, and what I'll call translating: How we talk to each other and faculty about program goals isn't necessarily how all of our students hear it.
Krieger: Another important part of a living-learning program is the opportunity for a shared dining experience. Though some colleges and universities, like Baylor and Appalachian State, have a dining center in the building, others, like Elon, utilize other spaces where residential community members can dine together.
The international aspect and the information about dining are reassuring to me. Whenever I think of residential colleges, I flash back to when I was on a study tour in Australia and remember that some halls often had dining rooms, and at least one night a week, the students were required to eat together.
Krieger: It really comes from the Oxbridge Model: A faculty member guides the students’ academic pursuits, as well as helping to make them into better men (because it was all men at the time). You were breaking bread together. You were living together. You were engaging together. You were educating together. Everything was together. Folks like me who advocate for participation in a residential college see this as a premier collegiate experience in the context of belonging, engagement, and community – these are the foundational aspects of a residential college.
Regarding your comments about differing levels of faculty involvement, I know that enticing faculty is often a challenge for living-learning programs. And, in this day and age, time is even more precious. So I wonder what thoughts you might have about setting those expectations and understanding the appropriate roles for faculty versus the housing staff.
Krier-Jenkins: I hate to say it depends, but yeah. I work on a campus where our learning communities are actually run through an office that reports to the provost. They are attached to multiple classes, and they do have faculty, some of whom drive more than others, just as we have complex directors who drive more than others. It comes down to the person and the topic. There are some faculty who are participating in weekly events or conversations. I know they are meeting up with students for coffee. I know they are tying classroom work to the cocurricular efforts. And then there are others who may not have been inside the halls after that first tour. That's what I'm hearing on a lot of different campuses.
The same thing goes on the residential staff side. How well do our staff know the syllabus? How much is our staff communicating with faculty and offering that support? I think it comes down to an issue of buy-in, not only from the individual college but also from the residence life department and their supervisors.
That’s a question I want to ask Carl. Obviously, residential colleges have been around for a while, but where does the program often originate on a campus? Is it from the boots on the ground, and then the upper administration buys in? Or is it the vision of the provost and beyond, and then everybody makes it happen? I suspect this is the same as any partnership, whether it's faculty and staff, or advisors and housing, or athletics and housing. It always depends on the human beings involved.
Krieger: Right now, I'm at Purdue where we do not have a residential college system. We do have a residential college, and it has almost all of the pieces, except for a live-in faculty member, and its purpose is very similar. My experience with residential colleges and building them was mostly at Virginia Tech, and that was a top-down initiative from Dr. Frank Shushok, then associate vice president for student affairs at Virginia Tech and now president of Roanoke College; it was his goal coming from Baylor to provide a residential experience like the one he had seen there.
With that, I saw both top-down and bottom-up systems and where they meet in the middle. The top-down method is very important, because some changes have to be enacted in the campus ecosystem. I mean, one thing that seems silly, though it's not, is just the term “residential college.” On many campuses a college is meant to be associated with an academic department, and so there can be some dissonance about the terms being used.
When there is support from the top, you talk about who's supervising. Who is holding people accountable? Frank Shushok, as the associate vice president for student affairs, was a dotted-line supervisor for all of our residential college faculty principals – which means that they were talking with each other, having one-on-one meetings, and setting expectations. That can't always happen.
Amanda, you had mentioned that the living-learning programs in the halls on your campus are connected to different areas of study. When you think about the residential experience being a complement or a supplement to that, what do you see as lessons from the residential college experience that would better support that model?
Krier-Jenkins: It's interesting because at Wisconsin-Whitewater during the pandemic one thing that got cut was our learning community programs. (They came back last year.) Then, after the pandemic, the first-year experience office, which reports to academic affairs, had primarily all brand new staff. So we're rebuilding what we had a really strong model for before. We had 17 communities last year, and I believe there are a few extra this year. They are all tied to a faculty member or instructional staff with at least one class, but typically two or three. The difference is that ours are primarily focused on that first-semester transition. Then it's on the hall and the individual faculty to continue it into spring semester.
Carl, what you described sounds amazing. I would love that, and some of our faculty take it upon themselves to do that. Many times, when I'm training my housing staff, I focus on how they can use the tools at their disposal to communicate to their target audience. Some of our student staff see that as inauthentic. But, to me, you just have different tools; sometimes you need a hammer, sometimes you need a screwdriver. And so when I'm talking to faculty about a residential component, I will discuss assessment and make sure I’m using the right terminology. I don't have the letters after my name, but I still need to learn and speak their language. But when I'm talking to my students, that's not what they need to hear. They want to see a wonderful infographic and a short commercial that highlights the same end result.
Our successes are based on the fact that when the housing component matches the faculty component, wonderful things happen. Last year I noticed that our assessment data revealed that students who were part of living-learning communities had higher retention numbers. Their GPAs were higher. We know the model works; we just need to continue getting it off the ground.
On the flip side, we also have special living options that are more theme-based and aren't tied to a faculty member or a class. LLCs can offer amenities for students who prefer a quiet lifestyle and a substance-free space, and they can be based on creating a global village characterized by pride and acceptance. These efforts are primarily the responsibility of residence life staff and their partners in other campus offices. Because, again, you have to know who your experts are.
Gone are the days when many housing and residence life professionals felt they needed to be the experts on everything. Now I think we need to be the experts on communication and using resources. It’s about how we can benefit you and how you can benefit us all so that ultimately we can better serve students. When that communication happens, magic happens. Building partnerships is crucial because during the pandemic many of those relationships went away. People moved on, left the field, changed, or had other priorities.
I know that's a long-winded way to answer your question, but I think it comes down to knowing your audience. I train my staff to understand an important difference: that how they speak to a business college faculty member differs from how they would speak to someone in the arts and sciences. There's a different type of experience that those students are looking for and that the faculty will hear. That, to me, is key.
Krieger: One of the important pieces is to understand the vastness of the academic initiatives umbrella and to realize that there's a continuum. For me, participating in a residential college can be the ultimate positive experience for an undergraduate. But in today's economic climate, it is difficult to find a campus willing to put their money where their mouth is. So it’s important to understand that there is another end of the continuum, and that's okay. Just a belief that the academic side of campus should be connected to the residential side starts you down that road, and moving down it can involve utilizing resources and implementing charges from senior leadership or from people who find value in it that causes it to bubble up from the bottom. People take on the ownership to create those relationships with the faculty they see at student advising meetings and at award banquets. As long as you are trying to make that happen, I think you're doing a great job.
Krier-Jenkins: I don't know why, but I've never thought about it as a spectrum, and you're absolutely right. All of our universities and colleges should have the end goal of student success, no matter the particular students or the program. And let's be candid; we have to know what our students need to be successful, and we need the proverbial crystal ball to know what students 5–10 years from now will need to be successful. I think that's why it comes down to knowing your target student and what that student needs and then making that happen and getting both sides – faculty and staff – on board.
Krieger: When you start down this rabbit hole of engaging faculty, the unstated assumption is that you will get every faculty member on your campus to buy in. That is the dumbest thing I can think of. What you have to do instead is help that supervisor and yourself reframe the expectations. The expectation should be that you just need a handful because those will eventually grow. At Virginia Tech, we tapped the right faculty; then the first faculty member was married to the second one, and the third one was best friends with the first one, and it spread like that.
It’s like when kids in elementary school are dumbfounded by seeing their teachers at the grocery store. We're dumbfounded that faculty have friends. They have dinner parties, play video games, and go to movies with their friends. And those friends are also faculty. And so when they are drinking a beer on the deck with their friends who talk about these awesome things they get to do in the residence halls, all of a sudden, that faculty member who had no clue such a thing existed becomes interested.
You mentioned that spectrum of what campuses can do. That took me back to the mindset in the book Living-Learning Communities in Practice, which discusses typologies and makes the point that a program doesn’t have to do everything to be considered successful. Individual campuses can work towards different goals. Understanding that, I'd like to hear about what assessment looks like to you.
Krier-Jenkins: I think it really depends on what your campus is doing and where they are on the spectrum. If you're talking about assessing the impact of one event, that's very different than assessing the living-learning program in particular or different faculty members. One thing we are going to expand on this year is a partnership with our student activities folks through student affairs, using some of their technology and platforms to develop a more easily quantifiable tracking of attendance and engagement for our students. If these students attend particular events, is there an impact on their retention? On their satisfaction? On their learning? What does their student conduct look like? Are they engaged positively, or are they a great leader but not necessarily following policies?
We are going to be able to look at individual students and at their persistence and their GPAs and everything that we want to quantify through institutional research. How many high-impact practices are they taking part in? Are they part of a living-learning community, but maybe they don't attend any events, they skip their first-year experience class, they don't have a campus job, and they have no interest in undergrad research? By tracking attendance, our goal is to be able to know what those magic responses mean for our particular campus. I suggest also looking at the other assessment tools on your campus and how you can partner with those other resources. Not to be cliché, but work smarter, not harder.
Krieger: I have always been a fan of the residential curriculum model primarily because of the assessment element. It’s like a bullseye: A lot of what we do in student affairs is take a bunch of darts, throw them against the wall, and then move the bullseye to where most of the darts hit. But with a residential college, so many things are happening that this strategy is not often helpful, so we need to put the bullseye on the wall first and then intentionally throw each dart at it.
My true belief is that assessment matters. The data show that students in residential colleges are more likely to have a higher GPA. In fact, there’s a continuum of impact on GPAs from various types of learning communities. Residential colleges are also shown to decrease the number of student conduct issues.
These are things that can justify the financial allocation that is given to them, because residential colleges are expensive. Is it justified? I don't know the answer to that. I think every campus is different. Retention is a great example. Residential colleges have a very high retention rate, but if no one has studied the differing financial impacts of retaining a student versus getting a new student, then you have no justification. You can say look at these pretty numbers, but they don't actually show that you're saving any money. I would argue that every campus I've been on has been able to clearly justify programs. So I think you should do all the assessment you possibly can.
Many people are conducting research and assessments. One thing I would offer up to my student affairs staff when they work with residential colleges is to remember that the faculty member is a researcher as well, and faculty can use the experience that they're living to get a grant to do research in a new program.
Finally, I’d like to talk a little bit about the crossroads between the academic benefits for students in these programs and the nuts and bolts of a campus housing business operations with questions of occupancy and space management and other elements.
Krier-Jenkins: We are a campus that values the living-learning community program. We are also a campus that values roommate requests, matching, and all the related items. When there is a best friend who is a science major and a best friend who is a business major, they would rather not be in the same living community. Behind the scenes, we're finding the balance between the mutual roommate requests and the living-learning community.
Our learning communities are defined less by being in a particular wing or on a particular floor and more by the building they are in. If the College of Business has three living-learning communities, those are in one building. They may not all be neighbors or roommates, but there's a common interest that's still tied back to academics. With mental health concerns and the transition of so many students who lack the same social and emotional learning experiences they had before the pandemic, we really do want to consider whether or not they have a roommate request or require an accommodation. That's the fine balancing act that goes on behind the scenes. That's why we're intentionally not broken down by wing or floor, but more by building.
Are you seeing other campuses taking a similar approach to navigate that balancing act?
Krier-Jenkins: I hate to say it depends on the campus, but it really does depend on the campus. There are some colleges where, when you become a residential student, you are part of a living-learning community, and when you check that box that's where you're living and you're going to get a random roommate. For that college, it works for them. If we tried that, it wouldn't work for us.
I think it is also key to know what your students need, what they will need down the road, and what your supervisors and administrators will support. That's the magic button to know how to structure what you have for your constituents. For us, it's a happy medium. Carl, based on your chuckle, I guess it's similar for you.
Krieger: I will echo all that. It really just depends on the campus that I've seen. It has to do with the institutional structure and expectations of what leadership believes are the priorities. I also think that it's the expectations of our students and their needs. That has changed things a great deal. I mean something as simple as student accommodations now versus 10 years ago has changed the landscape of what you are able to do.
With some of these communities, you have to navigate not just the students but also the many other pieces and parts that play a role, especially in a residential college. Oftentimes, in my presentation, I walk people through an exercise where I have them describe their house. They have their three bedrooms and two baths. They have a living room, they have Internet, they have a deck. Their dog can go outside. They park in a garage. Blah, blah, blah. And I say, “Okay, so you now have someone who’s just like you, and you’re asking them to move into a residence hall.” Are you going to let them paint the walls in their apartment? What? Paint a wall a different color? Never! And so that sort of thing is a question you have to work with, and it's a conversation you then need to have with your director of facilities. Sometimes you have to really get into it, because there are some policies and procedures that have always been in place and people do not want to change.
Then you have to think about the other things that pop up. Is it the kind of roommate issues where it would be the end of the world if a student was not allowed to pick their roommate? And what do you do if a person has to then value roommate over learning community?
Another random factor with living in residential colleges is that faculty may have kids. Those kids go to school. Does your school system accommodate your residence halls, or is that map a blank spot because they never assumed there would be school-age kids? And then the question becomes how you are going to have a school bus drive onto your campus and get close to your residence hall.
It's these small things that are part of creating any of these communities, and it only happens through collaboration and engagement with one another and learning about each other's experiences. It really is about remembering that faculty don't understand what you do. They have no context. And you have no clue what they do. You have no context. All you have is that you work on your side of the campus and that they work on their side of campus. That goes for your business office. That goes for your dining director. That goes for your facilities manager. That goes for your housekeeping staff. What are you doing to build those relationships and truly learn about one another? You have to learn what the other person does and where they are coming from. Once you do that, the likelihood of having the community experience – no matter where it is on the continuum – will only be better.
James A. Baumann is the Publications Director for ACUHO-I. The header photo is of students in Baylor University's Brooks Residential College at their traditional Sunday dinner. The cover photo is of the Preston Residential College at the University of South Carolina. Registration for the ACUHO-I Academic Initiatives Conference and the Residential College Symposium is open. More information is available online.
