Knute Axelbrod, 64, starts college lonely in a short story by Sinclair Lewis. “Lacking the stimulus of friendship, it was the harder for Knute to keep up the strain of studying the long assignments.” He eventually meets a classmate and shares an evening of history, music, and poetry, devouring “all the art of life he had come to college to find.”
That tale represents an ideal for colleges’ residential renovations, efforts to engineer the sort of engagement Knute achieves. A copy of the story was given to an architect before he began work on Franklin & Marshall College’s house system, which hoped to evoke such spirit.
With goals of fostering an intellectual atmosphere, building relationships, and increasing students’ involvement on campus—and, ultimately, their rates of retention—universities around the country, including Elon, Michigan State, and Southern Methodist, are looking to residence life. House systems, residential neighborhoods, and living-learning programs, they hope, will connect students’ learning in and out of class.
The idea is to make a campus feel more intimate and to promote a seamless student experience. At a meeting this fall of the Association of College and University Housing Officers-International, campus officials and architects discussed a shift toward academic integration, moving more faculty presence, classrooms, and study space to where students live.
“There is a great emphasis on making connections between students’ residential experience and academic lives,” says Vennie Gore, president of the association
At Franklin & Marshall, which introduced a house system in 2005, faculty members serve as “house dons,” and students govern, budget, and program activities for their residences. The average four-year graduation rate has since gone up from 77 percent to 82 percent.
And the five new houses, each with its own crest and motto, have apparently helped make Franklin & Marshall more attractive to prospective students: Applications have gone up by 27 percent since the house system opened.
Houses, Neighborhoods
The traditional college-house or residential-college system goes back centuries, to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and has long been in place at a few Ivy League institutions. Incoming students are randomly assigned to houses—if not by a magic sorting hat, as in the Harry Potter books—and stay with them throughout college. Typically the houses blend single or shared rooms and common areas with classrooms and faculty living space.
“It forms a community of scholars that will live together and learn together and become colleagues for life,” says Daniel Kelley, an architect with the Philadelphia-based firm MGA Partners. The ideal, he says, is “continual immersion in an intellectual environment.”
Franklin & Marshall, with about 2,300 undergraduates, and the University of Pennsylvania, with about 9,800, recently converted to house systems, both of them designed by Mr. Kelley. Penn’s sizable system comprises 11 houses, several of which mix freshmen with upperclassmen. Southern Methodist and Baylor University are moving in that direction.
Construction is under way at Southern Methodist, which calls its development the Residential Commons. It features five new complexes, in addition to existing residence halls, and is scheduled to open in the fall of 2014. Students will be required to live on campus for their first two years rather than one year, as is now the case.
The university will encourage students and live-in faculty members to establish an identity for their houses through events and traditions, building a sense of community, says Lori S. White, vice president for student affairs.
Michigan State, which enrolls 36,675 undergraduates, is pursuing similar goals in one of the largest single-campus residential systems in the country.
“One of the challenges you have with a university of our size is that it can be overwhelming to a student,” says Kelley Bishop, assistant vice president for strategic initiatives in the division of student affairs.
To cultivate a sense of belonging and connect students to campus resources, Michigan State introduced a “neighborhood” system in the fall of 2010, founded on four “pillars": residential support, academic success, health and wellness, and intercultural engagement. Each neighborhood has an Engagement Center, offering such services as math tutoring, career planning, a health clinic, and Zumba exercise classes.
“Students will come in” and “not only see peers studying or doing tutoring, but having direct access to faculty and staff,” says Mr. Gore, president of the housing-officers’ association and assistant vice president for residential and hospitality services at Michigan State.
Kristen S. Heitman, a junior and resident assistant at Michigan State, encourages students under her roof, many of whom are international, to use the language and writing centers, just downstairs.
The neighborhoods are good that way, she says. “It has made Michigan State seem smaller. To have all these resources closer to me, it’s comforting.”
Elon University, in North Carolina, is developing seven neighborhoods, each for 300 to 600 students and tailored to their needs. First-year students, for example, will live in a neighborhood in the heart of campus, to promote involvement. Seniors will have their own “village” of two- and four-bedroom apartments with private baths and full kitchens, with easy access to career counseling and other services suited to upperclassmen.
As of now, 58 percent of undergraduates at Elon live on the campus. Officials hope to see that proportion reach 67 percent by 2014, says G. Smith Jackson, vice president for student life and dean of students. The neighborhood concept is part of the university’s strategic plan to raise academic achievement and enhance the campus with new, and sustainable, facilities.
Finding Common Themes
Another common model, a thematic living-learning community, often linked with courses, can be hard to take to scale. But the University of Iowa plans to be among the first to try.
Beginning in the fall of 2013, Iowa will ask all first-year students to choose such a community. Each of 33 options will have a theme—"Shutterbugs” for aspiring photographers, “Green Adventures” for environmentalists—and incoming students will list five preferences.
Living among peers with a common interest “will break down barriers a little faster for students,” says Kate Fitzgerald, director of residence life. The university’s first new residence hall since 1968 is scheduled to open in 2015, with sections for living-learning communities of about 27 students each.
Thematic living is also driving construction at the University of Puget Sound, where five existing communities will move into a 135-bed residence hall next fall.
Brendan Joanou, a senior majoring in psychology, won’t be there to see his Humanities House in the new space, but even sharing a dorm floor, he says, has had an impact. “Having this program where we have lived together and worked together really did help to create very positive relationships.”
A native of Hawaii, Mr. Joanou got to Puget Sound not knowing anyone. But on his second night in Humanities House, a junior asked him if he wanted to join a few friends to watch The Hurt Locker. Now, as an upperclassmen, he makes sure to reach out to freshmen, hanging out in the lounge, chatting about current events, inviting them to get coffee or a snack, and studying together.
Even students who move off the floor have maintained ties to the community. Last year two of Mr. Joanou’s neighbors from freshman year, who by then lived elsewhere, came back to visit. Returning to the Humanities lounge after a midnight run to Safeway, they began talking about the Arab Spring in Egypt, the Republican primaries, the Tea Party, and different systems of government. The history major, the religion major, and the psychology major stayed up talking until 4 a.m.
Corrections (1/29/2013, 1:28 p.m.): This article originally misstated several facts about Franklin & Marshall College. The college introduced a house system in 2005, not 2011. Faculty members have offices in each house and participate in events but do not reside there. Applications to the college have gone up by 27 percent, not 43 percent, since the house system opened. Also, because of incorrect information provided to The Chronicle, the article misstated the effect of the new model on freshman and sophomore retention rates. They have held steady, between 92 and 93 percent; they did not increase to 94 percent from 85 percent. The article has been updated to reflect the corrections and to note the recent increase in Franklin & Marshall’s graduation rate.
