Bridging the Out-of-Class Gaps between Faculty & Students

Continuing my reflection and recap on various workshops I attended at the ACUHO-I conference, today I’m writing about Anna Schmidt and Tom Ellett’s presentation, “Faculty Perspectives on Residential Community Development”. Anna and Tom are from New York University.

My interest in this workshop stems from the fact that I think we could be doing a better job of connecting faculty with students in the residence halls at my own institution. I was quite impressed to see what NYU is doing to help faculty make connections with students outside the classroom.

At NYU, there is a large presence of faculty in the residence halls. Faculty Fellows-in-Residence are faculty who live in the residence halls, are provided with meal plans, and get a small stipend. In exchange, they are asked to have a presence in the hall and work with the residence life staff in the building. Faculty Affiliates are faculty who do not live in the halls, but are asked to do 1 to 2 programs a month in the residence hall. In exchange, they are provided with a stipend.

Both of these positions, as NYU describes on their own website, are “an ongoing University effort to create intimate ‘learning communities’ for our students within the residence halls as a way to integrate students’ academic experiences with their residential lives’”.

I am impressed at the level of commitment NYU has made to the Faculty Fellow and Affiliate positions. Not only have they made it a priority, but they have provided the resources to make this a success. In response, the faculty have bought into it. According to Tom and Anna, faculty are lining up to be Faculty Fellows and Affiliates.

Faculty Fellows and Affiliates at NYU have found it easier to interact with students in lounge areas and share in common, everyday experiences. The simple presence of faculty in the residence halls has helped break down a lot of barriers that exist between faculty and students. Students have begun to see faculty as human beings... It's really important for our students to see faculty as human beings.

At NYU, it appears that several exciting things have occurred as a result of the faculty fellow/affiliate program:

1. Residence Life staff members are now working hand-in-hand with faculty members to implement educational programming in the halls. (Faculty tend to rely on RAs to promote and advertise their programming efforts.)
2. Students have become more engaged as a result of the faculty-student dialogue that occurs out of class. 
3. Faculty have characterized the community within their classrooms as stronger than that which exists within students’ residence halls. (Part of this may be because the syllabus assures that all students in the class are going through the same experience at the same time.
4. Many faculty have stated that their teaching has improved as a result of their interactions with students outside the classroom.
5. The RA has continued to be the primary contributor to developing community within the residence hall.

The fact of the matter is this – many of us working in residence life don’t believe we have solid faculty involvement programs such as this on our campuses. Count me as one of them. 

Although all of our campuses might not have the resources to provide housing for faculty to live on campus or significant programming funds and stipends; we can still do something. The smallest steps can help us bridge the gaps that might exist on our campuses between students and faculty.

My short term plan is to reach out to the faculty on our campus and extend an invitation to them – an invitation to come into the residence halls; to engage with our students; and to break down some of the barriers that might exist between faculty and student. As NYU’s efforts have shown, the results can be mind-boggling.

Anna and Tom’s presentation has challenged me to think about how we are providing the bridges for faculty to interact with students in the residence hall.

How are you bridging the gaps that exist between faculty and students?