As administrators prepare to implement a residential life plan they hope will transform upperclass housing and social life, many of their efforts are intended to extend academics further into residence halls. But as they flesh out the details of that process, they are also examining how to include a group that traditionally has had a minor role outside of class: faculty members.
The changes to upperclass housing include moving all sophomores to West Campus, increasing the role of quads and adding more academic support services. Together, they constitute a vision for residential life in which administrators hope students will be more likely to engage in intellectual activities in their dorms. Although the specifics of how faculty fit into that vision remain uncertain, several factors may complicate their involvement.
Faculty members have not assumed a large role in the residential life discussions that have taken place over the past several years. Many discussions occurred within the Division of Student Affairs, and most decisions were made by the Residential Life Task Force, composed of administrators, some of whom are also faculty.
"Always there has been a desire to have greater faculty involvement in residential life, but it is difficult because they do have research and they do teach and they do have other responsibilities," said Jim Clack, former interim vice president for student affairs until this summer.
Some professors have offered input into the decisions through presentations at various committees, including the Academic Council and the Arts and Sciences Council, the two main governance bodies for faculty. Clack and others noted, however, that most such conversations have been limited and informal.
Other major shifts in residential life have more greatly involved faculty, often with a specific committee acting in an advisory role. The last such committee met in 1993-1994 and suggested ways to increase the intellectual climate on West and the newly all-freshman East Campus.
Now such suggestions have come on an ad hoc basis, said William Chafe, vice provost for undergraduate education and dean of the faculty of arts and sciences. He said faculty have not been very involved in the process so far because administrators first needed to develop a plan to which they could respond.
"We had to first of all chart those directions, and so now the issue of how to give support to that direction is quite important," he said. "The sense has been that we need to get our act together and then go out and get responses."
Some faculty members have already suggested new programs centered around the quad system. The School of Medicine, for example, is planning a program where a group of third-year medical students would be associated with a quad and act as mentors to undergraduates.
How more of such programming will take place in the quads has yet to be decided.
The Office of Student Development runs two programs designed to act as mechanisms for faculty-student interaction. About a dozen professors serve in the Faculty-in-Residence Program, living among students mostly in first-year dorms, and about 40 professors are in the Faculty Associates Program, acting as advisors and mentors to individual houses on East and West Campuses.
Because of the lack of space on West, administrators do not expect to expand the number of faculty members living in the dorms. The faculty associates on West, however, will change back to their original configuration with professors linked to whole quads rather than houses.
"With the changes in the residence coordinator, with the quads having a stronger profile and with the diminished house concept, I think the quad system makes a lot more sense," said Benjamin Ward, director of the two faculty programs and associate professor of philosophy.
Some current faculty associates said that linking with a whole quad was too overwhelming when it was tried before. Sara Miller, associate research professor of microbiology and faculty associate for Mirecourt, said that the program has offered her a valuable way to interact with undergraduates but that it was hard to become familiar with students when the program assigned professors to whole quads.
"It was hard to show up at all the quad events and really get to know students," Miller said. "If a faculty associate is more consistently put together with groups of 25 to 50 people, then students are more likely to talk to a faculty associate and say, OOh yeah, we talked before and I have some more questions I want to ask you.'"
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