The rare, but promising, involvement of faculty in residence hall programming.(Report)

Students regularly encounter faculty in classrooms. Student affairs personnel interact with students in the main when students are beyond the classroom. Both groups are pledged to encourage student development, but they rarely collaborate. What are the reasons for this divided effort? How can the separate spheres of faculty and student affairs work together such that learners can benefit from the partnership? This article reports on the insights gained from the five-year experience of two senior faculty who lived in a residence hall and endeavored to encourage greater academic presence in residence hall programming. In the interest of encouraging additional collaboration on other campuses, the article warns of obstacles and suggests promising strategies for overcoming them.

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The role of a faculty member in most colleges and universities is complex. Certainly, the faculty member is a teacher, but he or she is so much more. Service and research responsibilities are vigorous competitors for a faculty member's energies. Consequently, it is not surprising that faculty are often unaware of the student development contributions of student affairs personnel. Many of the support roles that make effective classroom learning possible are too frequently just taken for granted.

As a result, student affairs personnel often see faculty as failing in their professional role as developmental agents for, as they are likely to say, "the whole student." Student affairs personnel experience training that focuses on adult development, learning styles, cognition, and human communication, while faculty members specialize in the knowledge and skills of a given discipline. (Lovett, 2006).

Faculty are often largely unaware of the support services provided by student affairs personnel. If asked, they would surely express recognition that their institutions have offices for Residence Life, Dean of Students, Financial Aid, and Alumni Affairs, but those offices appear peripheral to the faculty member's educational role.

This paper attempts to create interest in a collaborative possibility that both respects (1) the faculty member's emphasis on the growth of the mind and (2) the student affairs personnel's knowledge of the full life of a college student. Involving faculty in programming in the residence halls requires the right mix of faculty and Resident Life support for such collaboration. But when this collaboration is done thoughtfully, much is to be gained by creating a more seamless integration in the life of the classroom and the dynamics of residence hall living. Faculty want students to be more involved in the learning aspect of higher education, and one promising avenue for that engagement is programming in residence halls.

Involving faculty in programming, sponsored by student affairs, has potential benefits that are difficult to match when such collaboration is missing. Collaboration between faculty and student affairs personnel have had documented successes in learning communities and in certain student organizations. (Pace, Blumreigh, and Merkle, 2006). But the essential attribute of these successes seems to be a shared vision of purpose. Kuh and Banta (2000). The communicative strength of the partnership is made possible by joint goals. Once that hurdle is overcome, both groups can search for optimal techniques for moving toward the goals. However, proceeding with collaborative projects without that common understanding threatens to bring to the surface the differences that make such collaborations rare in the first place. Long-standing differences, as well as specialization and segregation of institutional objectives, stand as barriers between academics and student-affairs personnel working successfully. (Kuh and Banta, 2000).