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.