Summer/Fall 1998

On Residing in a Residential College

St. Lawrence is a residential college. That seems obvious. Because it is so obvious, perhaps it is increasingly empty of meaning – that is the way things have always been. But universities and colleges in other countries, and newer institutions in America, are not necessarily residential. They are frequently much more narrowly academic or vocational in focus, and they leave the provision of food and housing for their students to the market surrounding their institution or, increasingly today, when distance learning is involved, wherever students are physically located.
I was asked at a meeting of local merchants and business leaders the other evening why St. Lawrence doesn’t allow more students to live off campus. Students have to learn eventually to live independently in the world – wouldn’t that be good preparation while at the same time it stimulates the local for-profit economy? It’s a good question because we don’t have to do it eh way we do it now.
Aside from the practical considerations stemming from the fact that we already own nearly enough residential space to house all of our students (of course, even this could be handled over time through sale and student leaseback) it comes down at bottom to education and the special opportunities we have to help students grow because we can work with them in a residential learning community and not just when they come to class, visit the library or participate in some other way in a formal program of the University.
This is an especially critical issue this year because we have a new vice president and dean of students, Dr. Marcia Lou (“Cissy”) Petty. I have charged her with the job of sharpening our vision of what it means to be a residential college and leading us to a mush more successful realization of its possibilities.
What are some of those possibilities? The first is a substantial increase in the time students spend on task, with the task itself far more broadly defined to include aspects of student development way beyond traditional academic learning. When all is said and done, the more you work at it, the more you learn. Of all the reforms possible at any level of American education, increasing time on task (however that is accomplished) would have the most powerful effect on student learning. Housing and feeding students on campus, near the educational resources they need, means they have to spend less time providing those services for themselves, increasing the time available for other things. That seems almost a trivial point, but it is important.
Far more consequential is what happens if housing and food are provided in such a way as to foster and facilitate more student learning in intentional ways. Students (and we should encourage them) build social lives for themselves at college in addition to their academic lives. What if we organize in such a way that students grow much more of their social lives out of their academic lives so that work and play are more often the same thing? We increase time on task and, with it, student learning.
The first thing we do, of course, is define the “task” far more broadly that non-residential colleges, so that we approach student participation in areas like intercollegiate athletics as part of our educational program, not as entertainment or simply play. Second, we can and do organize the residential part of St. Lawrence purposefully, with clear educational goals.
The most obvious example is well-known and highly respected First-Year Program (FYP), where students begin college in carefully designed academic and co-curricular living/learning communities – our first-year colleges. Living together as well as taking a seminar together extends conversations about academic work begun in class, and because FYP faculty and residence life staff commit to taking advantage of the residential college as a kind of student development laboratory, time on task and students learning grow significantly.
A second place where this happens is wherever on campus academic teaching and learning occur in collaborative groups – in science laboratories, on field trips, in the theater or art studio, or in musical performance. In situations of this kind, working together often leads to socializing together, and time on task increases.
A third example is wherever, in addition to the FYP, we have helped or could help students live together who want to learn together, such as our theme houses. Here, however, we have managed to miss the boat in an important way by not making the capital investment necessary to shape residential spaces so that they foster the student learning to which the theme house is devoted. WE have a small Artists’ Guild theme house, where students working in different disciplines live, but it does not include intentionally designed space to allow the students who live there and their guests to do their arts in our around their living environment. Those students have proposed that the University attach spaces allowing informal student-managed pursuit of the arts to residential spaces. I think it is a terrific idea, and I very much hope we can do it. The result will be substantially greater learning, for time on task driven by strong motivation will increase, and these students will surely grow a rich social life out of it as well. Johns Hopkins University is constructing three buildings, between a large residential quad and an academic quad, devoted entirely to student-scheduled and managed space in the arts. We can do it even better.
I believe we have also missed the boat by not engaging our Greek system more purposefully to foster these kinds of opportunities. Students talk about the leadership development that occurs within the Greek system, and I’m sure it happens. But there is a lot one can learn about leadership by thinking systematically about it, and by spending time with strong and effective leaders from off campus, not just by being a leader in a student group. We need to work with our students more to pursue this and other possible collaboration. This is Dr. Petty’s field. She plans a serious engagement with our Greek system and other student groups to bring leadership education forward in new ways for St. Lawrence.
All of this illustrates why residential colleges are so preoccupied with recruiting the right students – with selectivity. Students learn so much from each other in our kind of institution that it is critical to influence, as much as possible, from whom they are learning. It’s not enough to have a great faculty and a great staff – we must also have great students. Thankfully, they are everywhere here, and they are why we work so hard to get all of this right.
Many American colleges became residential because their founders believed, in contrast to European predecessors, that learning would take place more effectively in pastoral environments away form the potential contaminations of the urban scene. That meant providing directly for the living needs of student, not just their academic needs. We must work to realize the potential this creates for us in this modern world, such a far cry from the situation faced by our founders. We at St. Lawrence are committed to making it happen.